Peggy Noonan Quotes

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

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.

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

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

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.

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

Part of courage is simple consistency.

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.

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

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

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

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

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator

I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's cause some senators distress.

The first snow always startles. It covers the tricycle in the driveway, turning its frame into an abstact sculpture that says: See how quickly yesterday turns into today.

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.

A great speech is literature.

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

Abortion is either OK or it's not.

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.

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

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

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

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

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.'

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

Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.

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.

Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.

At some point, don't voters start to see all of public life as one big polluted river? And if they do, don't they stop saying things like "That's a busted tire floating by" and "That's an old shoe"?

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

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

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.

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

The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six years and yet exhausted. They're pale, tired, and unready. Too bad, since it's their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment.

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

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

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

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.

Read good, big important things.

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