Ron Suskind Quotes

The idea that our son would be like Raymond Babbitt was a shocking reordering of everything. And something we couldn't quite fathom, really.

This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.

The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises.

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.

In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them.

Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness.

Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

The fact is, I can vote for anybody; independents, Republicans, Democrats. But I'm a registered Democrat in the District of Columbia.

Security is by far the city's predominant business.

One world leader warned another the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need.

I don't have to deal with the issues of the daily news cycle.

Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force.

It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.

I'm [Paul O'Neill] an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me.

I'm a partisan, too. I'm in favor of AUTHENTICITY. US State Department veteran and U.N. refugee official Wendy Chamberlain

You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken.

It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying.

We are reformers in the spring, but iin autumn we stand by the old. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A little known area often defines the fortunes of leaders
management skills.

Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

Author describes auto CEO's decisions to drive rather than fly to Washington as "showy penitence".

The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place.

He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.

He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules.

The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere.

Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.

Al-Qaeda has a kind of loose, almost entrepreneurial structure with lots of cells in various countries that are semi-independent.

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community?

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

If the opposite of certainty is doubt, humility must lie somewhere between the two,

The media has become more forceful, has begun to recognize its traditional historic role and act on it, and truth is infectious.

These were lobbyists - many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.

I've been a reporter for 20 years, and I don't ever get things wrong. That's important in terms of my professional status.

Every person has their pantheon - the Bible, Hollywood, Shakespeare - their way of understanding the world.

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions.

What can we do? It's not dismissive or resigned. He really wants to know.

He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose.

For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes.

The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen.

A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.

The whole game was about confidence, as it always was. Everything was fine - until it wasn't.

Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs.