Top 100 Charles Brandt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A union is only as strong as its weakest member. Once there is dissension the employer senses it and takes advantage of it. Once you allow dissension and rebel factions to exist you are on the way to losing your union. You can have only one boss. You can have helpers, but you can’t have nine guys trying to run a local. If you did, the employer would make side deals and split the union.”

— Charles Brandt

2. “In Detroit I was assigned to Bill Isabel and Sam Portwine. They worked as a team, doing public relations, but actually Sam looked to Bill as boss of the team. Bill was about 5′8″ and was known for his ability with candy, not the kind you eat, the kind you use to blow things up with – dynamite. Bill was proficient in bombing, and he always packed. Bill was born in Ireland, but he sounded American. He came up through the ranks as a trucker.”

— Charles Brandt

3. “Bobby Kennedy called Jimmy Hoffa “the most powerful man in the country next to the president.” Part.”

— Charles Brandt

4. “Carlos Marcello and the war orphans did cross my mind during the drive, and I sat the whole way facing the driver. He was a little guy, and if he took his hand off the steering wheel I was going to take his head off for him.”

— Charles Brandt

5. “I put the coffee and Sambuca up to my nose. The licorice didn’t smell strong enough against the smell of the coffee so I added some Sambuca. I.”

— Charles Brandt

6. “A couple of weeks later Russell told me that Joey Glimco was Giuseppe Primavera. He had been with Al Capone and was very big with the Chicago outfit. He had a big record, a couple of murder arrests. He took the Fifth on every question during the McClellan Committee hearings, including whether he knew Jimmy Hoffa.”

— Charles Brandt

7. “Russell Bufalino had secret interests in Las Vegas casinos and not-so secret connections to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, whom Fidel Castro toppled in 1959. With Batista’s blessings Bufalino had owned a racetrack and a major casino near Havana. Bufalino lost a great deal of money and property, including the racetrack and the casino, when Castro booted the mob off the island. Time.”

— Charles Brandt

8. “To help me understand his combat days, Sheeran tracked down the 45th Infantry Division’s hardbound, 202-page official Combat Report, issued within months of World War II’s end. The more I learned from both this report and Frank himself, the clearer it seemed to me that it was during his prolonged and unremitting combat duty that Frank Sheeran learned to kill in cold blood. The.”

— Charles Brandt

9. “What kind of a big shot has the nickname of Skinny Razor? John got the name Skinny Razor because he used to own a live chicken store and the Italian ladies would come and pick out a chicken they wanted from looking at the chickens in the cages all lined up. Then John would take out a straight razor and cut the chicken’s throat, and that was the chicken the Italian ladies would take home and pluck and cook for dinner. Skinny.”

— Charles Brandt

10. “Russell Bufalino’s penetrating good eye stayed on mine. I moved back up in my seat. I couldn’t show anything in my face. I couldn’t say a word. That’s not the way it works. The wrong look in my eyes and my house gets painted. Jimmy.”

— Charles Brandt

11. “If you were AWOL when your company was going back into combat you might as well keep going because your own officers would blow you away, and they didn’t even have to say it was the Germans. That’s desertion in the face of the enemy. While.”

— Charles Brandt

12. “If you could refresh my recollection on that matter I might be able to recall what you want me to recall, but at this particular time I do not recall the particulars of that particular matter.”

— Charles Brandt

13. “Our goal was Munich in Bavaria in southern Germany, the town where Hitler had gotten his start in a beer hall. But on the way, we made a stop to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau.”

— Charles Brandt

14. “Russell said something in Sicilian about stormy weather conditions that roughly translates into “You never can tell how things are going to work out. The weather’s in God’s hands.” I.”

— Charles Brandt

15. “Then one day this guy, Whispers DiTullio, came over to my table at the Bocce Club and bought me a glass of wine.”

— Charles Brandt

16. “Not all people are affected the same way by the same events. We are each our own fingerprints and the sum of our own life’s experiences.”

— Charles Brandt

17. “Actually, my attention was on a pretty Irish girl sitting in the stands with the sweetest smile on her face. I was trying to show off for her. Her name was Mary Leddy, and I had seen her in the neighborhood, but I had never spoken to her. Pretty soon she was going to change her name to Mrs. Francis J. Sheeran, but she didn’t know that then sitting there in the third row, laughing along with the rest of the crowd. Between.”

— Charles Brandt

18. “The only thing is that Whispers had the worst breath known to man or beast. He suffered from halitosis so bad you’d think he was growing garlic in his belly. No amount of chewing gum or mints did him any good. So he was only allowed to whisper when he talked to people.”

— Charles Brandt

19. “They started inviting me into the Messina Club at Tenth and Tasker, which is a members-only joint where you get the best sausage and peppers you ever ate. You’d play cards there; just hang out without the public citizens being at the next table. It’s still there, and it still has the best sausage and peppers in all of South Philly. A.”

— Charles Brandt

20. “Russell turned his head and said to me, “Say hello to Jimmy Hoffa.” Then Russ handed me the phone. I reached for the phone and I thought, can you imagine this? Jimmy Hoffa calling to talk to me? “Hello,” I said. “Glad to meet you.” Jimmy Hoffa didn’t even say hello. He got right to the point. The next thing I heard were the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to me. “I heard you paint houses,” Jimmy said.”

— Charles Brandt

21. “For better or for worse, meeting Russell Bufalino and being seen in his company put me deeper into the downtown culture than I ever would have gotten on my own. After the war, meeting Russell was the biggest thing that happened to me after my marriage and having my daughters. I.”

— Charles Brandt

22. “Russell had lost the thumb and index finger on his left hand when he was young. He moved the thumb he still had around like he was grinding something into the white tablecloth and said, “Dust to dust.” I.”

— Charles Brandt

23. “And under the contract, management couldn’t fire a Teamster unless they had certain grounds. They had none. Stealing was grounds only if they could prove it. Besides, I worked hard for them when I wasn’t stealing from them. But.”

— Charles Brandt

24. “Giancana was taken care of in his kitchen in the back of the head and then under the chin six times, Sicilian style, to signify he was careless with his mouth. It looked like it was done by some old friend that was close enough to him to be frying sausages in olive oil with him. Russell often said to me: “When in doubt have no doubt.”

— Charles Brandt

25. “Y-Y-Yeah, and I d-do my own carpentry work, too.” I was embarrassed because I was stammering. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I understand you’re a brother of mine.” “That’s right.” I was keeping my sentences short and my words few. “Local 107. Since 1947.” “Our friend speaks very highly of you.”

— Charles Brandt

26. “I got a little carried away one day and sold my entire load of meat on my way to a delivery in Atlantic City. I put the seal on my lock after the whole load of meat was transferred to the guy. When I got to Atlantic City the seal was broken by the manager and there was no meat inside and I was mystified.”

— Charles Brandt

27. “Red had a stepson named Allen Dorfman. Jimmy put Red and Allen in charge of union insurance policies, and then he put Allen as the man to see for a pension fund loan. Allen was a war hero in the Pacific. He was one tough Jew, a Marine. He was stand-up, too. Allen and Red took the Fifth a grand total of 135 times during one of those Congressional hearings they used to have.”

— Charles Brandt

28. “Between the second and third rounds I asked my buddies what the hell was going on. “Who’s hitting me on the head?” They told me it’s the referee, that he doesn’t like Irishmen. I walked over and told the referee if he hits me on the back of the head one more time I’m going to knock him out. He said, “Get back in there and fight, rookie.” I.”

— Charles Brandt

29. “You didn’t know who to trust, but you kept taking cabbies aside and persuading them to sign a card. For some reason there were a lot of lesbians who were working as cabbies at that time in Detroit. They liked to be treated like men, and you had to respect that or you wouldn’t get a signature. If.”

— Charles Brandt

30. “Once in a while Giancana would have a guy with him named Jack Ruby from Dallas. I met Jack Ruby a few times. I know Jimmy’s kid met him, too, at the Edgewater. Ruby was with Giancana and he was with Red Dorfman. One time we all went out to eat and Ruby had a blond with him that he brought up from Dallas for Giancana. There is no doubt whatsoever that Jimmy Hoffa didn’t just meet Jack Ruby, he knew Jack Ruby, and not just from Giancana, but from Red Dorfman, too.”

— Charles Brandt

31. “They say good girls like bad boys. Opposites attract. Mary loved me, but her family hated me. They thought I was what they used to call shanty Irish, and I guess they thought they were what they used to call lace-curtain Irish. Or maybe they saw something in me; that as hard as I was trying I was still too unpredictable for their Mary. Mary.”

— Charles Brandt

32. “As I learned the ropes I learned that for many good and sound reasons the bosses and the captains sent a guy to whack you who was your friend. The obvious factor was that the shooter could get close to you in a lonely spot.”

— Charles Brandt

33. “Many a time Russ reached up and pinched my cheek and said, “You should’ve been Italian.” He’s the one named me “The Irishman.” Before that they used to call me “Cheech,” which is short for Frank in Italian – Francesco. After.”

— Charles Brandt

34. “During the dinner Bill said something to Jimmy I’ll never forget. He said, “I’ve never seen a man walk straight through a crowd of people like the Irishman does and never touch a single person. Everybody automatically parts out of the way. It’s like Moses parting the Red Sea.” Jimmy.”

— Charles Brandt

35. “He had that smile on his round, craggy face you get when you squint at the sun. He had muscle deterioration in his face that gave him a lazy eye. If you didn’t know him you would think he was blinking or drinking. With his good eye he looked through his wide glasses into my blue eyes. Russell.”

— Charles Brandt

36. “Thinking about what my brother said to me on the dock in Le Havre makes me wonder if he was looking into my soul. I knew something was different about me. I didn’t care anymore about things. I had been through practically the whole war; what could anybody do to me? Somewhere overseas I had tightened up inside, and I never loosened up again. You get used to death. You get used to killing. Sure, you go out and have fun, but even that has an edge.”

— Charles Brandt

37. “The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had blue laws that didn’t allow bars to be open on Sunday. No stores were open. It was the day of worship. Even later on when night baseball came in, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics could play baseball at Shibe Park on Sunday only while there was daylight. They weren’t allowed to turn on the stadium lights on Sunday. Many a Sunday game was called on account of darkness.”

— Charles Brandt

38. “Bobby Kennedy chose the members of the squad himself. He gave the squad a very limited job to do and gave the squad a very subtle name: “The Get Hoffa Squad.” Everything, and I mean everything, came as a result of that.”

— Charles Brandt

39. “The Sicilian people were very friendly. Once we drove the Germans out I got to see Catania, where every house had homemade spaghetti drying on the clothesline. After the war Russell Bufalino liked the fact that I went right through his town. My.”

— Charles Brandt

40. “Russell had not been coming to Philly just for prosciutto bread and sweet and hot sausage from Roselli’s, not even extra-hot sausage. He had business interests with Angelo Bruno, their own kind of business. And.”

— Charles Brandt

41. “We hung up and I thought, boy, he’s a speaker. For a minute there, I thought it was Patton.”

— Charles Brandt

42. “I’ll have an Irish banquet waiting for you – a bottle of Guinness and a bologna sandwich.”

— Charles Brandt

43. “That’s right, yeah. I told him I’d be in Detroit tomorrow. I better start driving right now.” “Don’t be in such a hurry,” Russ said, and handed me the envelope that he had placed on the table when he sat down. “Go ahead, open it.” In it was a plane ticket to Detroit and a pile of $100s. All.”

— Charles Brandt

44. “One afternoon a bunch of us went downtown to sell our blood for $10 a pint to get some more money to keep drinking shots and beer. On the way back we saw a sign for a carnival. It said that if you could last three rounds with a kangaroo you’d win $100. That was a better deal than the blood money we had just made. So off we went to the carnival. They.”

— Charles Brandt

45. “Pushing money was a natural for me, because I was already pushing football lottery tickets in the White Tower hamburger joints on my route for an Irish muscle guy and ex-boxer named Joey McGreal, who was a Teamster organizer out of my Local 107.”

— Charles Brandt

46. “I went to work for the union around the time all this was going on, right after Jimmy got the president’s job. After the wiretap trial everybody was saying they didn’t make a parachute big enough to save Bobby Kennedy’s ass when he jumped off the Capitol.”

— Charles Brandt

47. “Only in the movies or comic books do people say they want you to go and hit somebody. All they ever say is that they want you to go straighten a matter out. They say they want you to do whatever you’ve got to do to straighten a matter out.”

— Charles Brandt

48. “The best thing, and the most important thing the labor movement cannot do without, and must have and fight to keep, is solidarity.”

— Charles Brandt

49. “Jimmy did a lot of business with our friends, but he always did it on Jimmy Hoffa’s terms. That pension fund was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Jimmy was close with Red Dorfman out of the Chicago outfit. Red got the Waste Handlers Union in Chicago in 1939, when the president of that union got whacked. They say Red had Jack Ruby with him as the other officer in the union. That’s the same Jack Ruby who whacked Lee Harvey Oswald.”

— Charles Brandt

50. “Hoffa and his Strawberry Boys’ victory in 1932 was a rare labor victory in those days. In that same year a group of World War I veterans and their plight came to symbolize the powerlessness of the working man in the Depression. In 1932 thousands of veterans, tired of broken promises, marched on Washington and refused to leave the Mall until their promised bonuses, not due until 1945, were granted by Congress now when they needed them most.”

— Charles Brandt