Peggy Noonan Quotes

I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.

Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to, said Ronald Reagan.

I ought to pray as much as God's on my mind, because then I'd pray a lot. All I can tell you is God is real, and so that infuses everything.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

Abortion is either OK or it's not.

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

Word of the day- kakistocracy. From the Greek meaning government by the worst persons, least qualified or most unprincipled.

The core of the concept of a bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised.

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

Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.

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

Things change. Time changes them. Great nations, and institutions, rethink. But only if they're great.

Humor is the shock absorber of life; it helps us take the blows.

A sermon expands to fill the time allotted to complete. it

The Democratic Party's complete obeisance to [the abortion] lobby makes Democrats look bought, frightened and craven.

When men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane.

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

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

I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.

Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive.

Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.

Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.

I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.

All great political families have myths: stories they tell themselves about how history happened.

Hubert Humphrey's wife is said to have advised him: Darling, for a speech to be immortal it need not be interminable.

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

I guess the second-term team is not quite as adoring as the first.

Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.

Part of courage is simple consistency.

[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.

TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains.

My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage

Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out.

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.

As we have become more open minded (tolerant) in society we have become more closed hearted.

But one immediate thing can be done right now, and that is: lower the temperature. Any way you can, and everybody. Just lower it.

By trying to do too much, you risk not doing enough.

He [Pope Benedict XVI] spoke of the distilled message of John Paul's reign: Be not afraid

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try.
in Good Housekeeping

Loyalty consists of many things, including being truthful with our friends. When you really disagree, you have to say so.

This is the Democratic paradox: You want so much to run America and yet you seem not so fond of Americans.

A great speech is literature.

Let's cause some senators distress.

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.

You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone.