Peggy Noonan Quotes - Page 2

What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.

We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.

Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk.

The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.

A great speech is literature.

The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.

Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service.

In ancient Israel and Rome the judge had appeared as a stand-in for the divine, and corruption was a blinding of the representative of the divine.

It's better for the country when each party looks like it stands for something serious, for some big things, but they're not narrow and they're not bought.

one way to keep people close to you is by not giving them enough. ... with people who give a lot of themselves, you sometimes lean back - but with people who give little you often lean forward, as if they're a spigot in the desert and you're the empty cup. It is the tropism of deprivation: We lean toward those who do not give.

When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.

The Democratic Party will now stick with its guy forever, no matter how harmful he is. Perhaps you call that loyalty, and perhaps there's something to it, but a bigger part, I believe, is that you have come to think that winning is everything-that victory is the purpose of politics.

George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936.

We don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

Read good, big important things.

Ted Sorrenson, JFK's presidential speech writer, when asked how it came about that he wrote the "ask not what you can do..." speech, he would answer 'ask not.'

The Democratic party should say, "Thank you very much, but you know what, we're going back to be a big-tent party. Broad on social issues like this, we are declaring, go with your heart if you truly feel that you can be, that you are pro-life, and you wanna be pro-life, and a Democrat, go for it." The Democratic party has I think been hurt very badly in terms of its national reputation with this narrow, sort of, you can't be in our party if you don't hold the right views on abortion. It would be a brilliant political move if they opened up.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

The thing political figures fear most is a terror event that will ruin their careers. The biggest thing they fear is that a bomb goes off and it can be traced to something they did or didn’t do, an action they did or didn’t support. They all fear being accused of not doing enough to keep the citizenry safe.

If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.