Peggy Noonan Quotes (31 Quotes)

More was needed in terms of sending a US military presence into New Orleans.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Remember the waterfront shack with the sign Fresh Fish Sold Here. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign Fish.

Let's cause some senators distress.

Part of courage is simple consistency.

The most moving thing in a speech is always the logic. It is never flowery and flourishes. It is not sentimental exhortation, it is never the faux poetry we're all subjected to these days.

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

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

The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy.

Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money. . .

George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending Bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr Bush responds with one big question Got any barbecue sauce

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

We adults forget what we do to children's imaginations when we go through one of our national seizures on an issue. A dozen years ago, Hollywood fell in love with the environmental issue and put enviro messages in all their shows. The messages made their way into the funnies and magazines, and parents went to school officials and said, 'We'd like our children to be better educated on environmental concerns.' The schools came through with a vengeance. Now I have a little son who thinks he's going to die from pollution. We do not educate our children we traumatize them. We are not giving them a vision of a better world we are giving them nightmares.

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.

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

Abortion is either OK or it's not.

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

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.

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

Read good, big important things.

A great speech is literature.

The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.

Does he know in his gut that the existence of looting, chaos and disease in a great American city, or cities, is a terrible blow that may have deep implications

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.

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.

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...