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.

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through.

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.

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

We are all afraid. That's the thing that unites all truly successful people: fear, fear of failing, fear of criticism, fear of letting down the team in some way. That why they try so hard, that's why they pay attention to detail and try to get every possible duck in a row. It's fear

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.

The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.

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

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.

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.

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

Part of courage is simple consistency.

What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace - a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we're in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported.

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.

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.

What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

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

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

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, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

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

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

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.

Our patriotic fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries. Other nations had evolved one way or another, evolved from tribes from a gathering of clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born, and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom.

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.

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

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

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

We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.

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

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

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

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.

Let's cause some senators distress.

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.

The thing political figures fear most is a terror event that will ruin their careers. The biggest thing they fear is that a bomb goes off and it can be traced to something they did or didn’t do, an action they did or didn’t support. They all fear being accused of not doing enough to keep the citizenry safe.

A great speech is literature.

one way to keep people close to you is by not giving them enough. ... with people who give a lot of themselves, you sometimes lean back - but with people who give little you often lean forward, as if they're a spigot in the desert and you're the empty cup. It is the tropism of deprivation: We lean toward those who do not give.

What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.

What I got was not so much gifts and whishes come trues but a feeling of peace. I got peace itself, actually. And when you have peace, you can be strong; and when you are strong, you can get through what you have to get through, and not with exhaustion and frown marks and slumped shoulders but with relative happiness, and humor, and sometimes even gaiety.

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.

The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too.

Do not be afriad! I can see that Americans are not afraid. They are not afraid of the sun, they are not afraid of the wind, they are not afraid of 'today'. They are, generally speaking, brave, good people. And so I say to you today, always be brave. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. God is with you. Do not be afraid to search for God-then you will truly be the land of the free, the home of the brave. God Bless America.

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.

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