Molly Ivins Quotes

With politicians, artful evasion is always preferable to the outright lie.

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman

Mostly, Texas women are tough in some very fundamental ways. Not unfeminine, nor necessarily unladylike, just tough!

You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.

Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world.

Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.

Sometimes I think Texas exists as a reality check for those who might wander too far toward the precious.

Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system or we lose the democracy.

I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.

The Founders were right all along, but the results are a lot funnier than they intended.

Texas is a fine place for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses.

Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.

Humanism is not alive and well in Texas. Different colors and types of Texans do not like one another, nor do they pretend to.

Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

California is now close to spending more on prisons than it does on higher education - surely the death warrant of a civilization.

If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.

Oh, hell, I can’t go on a spiritual journey—I'm constipated.

I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.

Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.

In the first place, any group of folks willing to make asses of themselves in pursuit of a good time should be commended and encouraged: The spirit of human frolic needs all the help it can get.

the more a body tries to explode all the foolish myths that have grown up about Texas by telling the truth, the more a body will wind up adding to the mythology.

Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.

The thing is this: You got to have fun while you're fightin' for freedom, 'cause you don't always win.

This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency

Democracy requires a certain relish for confusion

I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.

Behind a smoke screen of high-profile female appointees and soothing slogans, George W. Bush is waging war on women.

As for George Bush of Kennebunkport, Maine- personally I think he's further evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky has an overdeveloped sense of irony.

In city rooms and in the bars where newspeople drink, you can find out what's going on. You can't find it in the papers.

So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds.

Everyone knows [George W. Bush] has no clue, but no one there has the courage to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely adequate.

I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

...you could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.

Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.

Of course, it has never paid much.

Texas is not a civilized place. Texans shoot one another a lot. They also knife, razor, and stomp one another to death with some frequency. And they fight in bars all the time.

If you really wanted to settle down the Middle East, if what you wanted was change in the Middle East, it is perfectly obvious that the first step is resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed.

The advantage of being able to identify sin is that you can go out and do it, and enjoy it.

no one has ever accused Texas of being in the vanguard of social progress. This is the most macho state in the U.S. of A. By lore, legend, and fact, Texas is 'hell' on women and horses.

Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

The stakes they play for in politics are paper and money. The chips they play with are your life.

The only reason to have a positive mental attitude is that it makes life better. It doesn't cure cancer.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay atten

I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.And that no one knows the truth.