Peggy Noonan Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Courage, Strong, Clever

  59 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Real, Thinking, America

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Humor, Blow, Shock Absorber

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• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Stress, Patriotic, Views

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Peggy Noonan

  Team, Teaching, Learning

  26 Copy quote

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Beautiful, Nice, Inspirational Life

  41 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Country, Business, Taken

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Running, America, Politics

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

  Peggy Noonan

  America, Political, Gone

  Peggy Noonan (1990). “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House (NY)

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• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Careers, Support, Political

  "The Era of Metadata". blogs.wsj.com. June 8, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Children, Heart, Poetry

  Peggy Noonan, Steven Emerson, Brian Duffy, Thomas J. Watson, Peter Petre (1990). “Today's Best Nonfiction”

  65 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Moving, Government, Contribution

  Peggy Noonan, Steven Emerson, Brian Duffy, Thomas J. Watson, Peter Petre (1990). “Today's Best Nonfiction”

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Children, Past, Political

  Peggy Noonan (2015). “The Time of Our Lives: Collected Writings”, p.113, Hachette UK

  6 Copy quote

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Risk, Trying, Too Much

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Ocean, Editing, Editors

  Peggy Noonan (1990). “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House (NY)

  14 Copy quote

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Thinking, Miracle, World

  Peggy Noonan (1990). “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House (NY)

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Nature, Interesting, Political

  What I Saw at the Revolution "Another Epilogue" (1990)

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  Humor, Men, Law

  Peggy Noonan (1990). “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House (NY)

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Peggy Noonan

  War, Mind, Battle

  What I Saw at the Revolution ch. 14 (1990)

  52 Copy quote

• Part of courage is simple consistency.

  Peggy Noonan

  Courage, Simple, Consistency

  "SC chair: Conservatism thrives" by Katon Dawson, www.politico.com. November 28, 2008.

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Peggy Noonan

  Communication, Thinking, Self

  12 Copy quote

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Needs, Moral, Aids

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Friendship, True Friend, Communication

  "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era". Book by Peggy Noonan, 1990.

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Peggy Noonan

  Wisdom, Mean, Trying

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

  Peggy Noonan

  Loyalty, Truthful, Including

  8 Copy quote

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