Maureen Dowd Quotes

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.

Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he's just a fresh face on a Taliban creed - the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.

When you're young, and even at times when you're older, it's hard to fathom this: What needs to be nurtured is the stuff that's different, that sets you apart from the pack, rather than the stuff that helps you blend in.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.

Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last.

If you're famous enough, the rules don't apply.

Perpetual optimism is annoying. It is a sign that you are not paying attention.

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit.

Celebrity is the religion of our time.

Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn't mean you're actually reaching people.

Zingers should glow with intelligence as well as drip with contempt.

Don't write anything down, but save everything that anyone else writes down.

Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.

It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them.

Good and evil are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys.

A friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.

The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They're trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.

President Bush was once asked which Presidential speech he admired most. He replied that it was the one Teddy Roosevelt had in his pocket that had helped cushion the blow of a would-be assassin's bullet.

Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that “demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters.” ... It would have been better to put this language in the platform: “A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

It takes a lot of adrenaline and fear to make me actually write.

The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.

As a woman, I know that if I write about another woman, it will be perceived as a catfight.

Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.