Charlie Pierce Quotes

• We, The People is more than a statement of purpose. It is an acknowledgement of an obligation to each other.

  Charlie Pierce

  People, Purpose, Acknowledgement

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• We create our own government. We are responsible for its beauty and for its ugliness. We are responsible for its glories and for its failures and, most important, we are responsible for amending those failures no matter who are their most immediate architects.

  Charlie Pierce

  Government, Important, Matter

  "The President Finally Accepts America for Ourselves" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. July 27, 2015.

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• Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched.

  Charlie Pierce

  Damage, Horrible, Touched

  "Conservatives Can Own Reagan, But You Don't Get Mandela" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. December 6, 2013.

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• It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and ennobled by the effort.

  Charlie Pierce

  Struggle, Effort, Weakness

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

  Charlie Pierce

  Optimistic, Optimism, Despair

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• Campaigns are no longer high-minded exchanges of ideas, even though God knows we need more good ones - ideas, that is.

  Charlie Pierce

  Ideas, Needs, Campaigns

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 A.M.

  Charlie Pierce

  Love, Funny, Marriage

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• It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.

  Charlie Pierce

  Sarcastic, Mother, Gay

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• If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels.

  Charlie Pierce

  Ignorance, Squares, Doe

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• There is a lot in American politics (and in American life) that is angry, greedy, reckless and violent.

  Charlie Pierce

  Greedy, Reckless, Violent

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• You know, what genuinely makes me uneasy with the way things are going are not - is not really that Trump is going to do everything he said he was going to do, it`s that he has no idea of his job as president. Plus, the people who have been up close and realized that he has no idea how to do this job are leaking like sieves.

  Charlie Pierce

  People, President, Uneasy

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• Every president learns on the job because nobody`s really prepared for the kind of decisions that cross your desk every day. No one`s prepared for that. No vice president who has scended to the presidency has ever truly been ready for that. Certainly, no vice president who`s assumed the presidency in extremis, like Harry Truman, has been ready for that. But this Trump guy doesn`t seem to be ready for a career in government.

  Charlie Pierce

  Guy, Decision, President

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?

  Charlie Pierce

  Funny, Sarcastic, Mother

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• In order to get big things done, sometimes, presidents have to be deft at moving the pea around under the shells.

  Charlie Pierce

  Moving, Order, President

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.

  Charlie Pierce

  Heart, Government, May

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charlie Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most central to a writer's craft - language and memory, which together make up an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new character out of a familiar person.

  Charlie Pierce

  Memories, Character, Alzheimer's

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• The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank's marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.

  Charlie Pierce

  Wall, Shadow, Monsters

  "The Lonely War Of Marlin Stutzman" by Charlie Pierce, www.esquire.com. October 3, 2013.

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• Bill Clinton was not a symbol. People did not invest in him their idea of what America should be or, worse, their pride in what they thought America had become. There was no great moral self-congratulation in having elected a president from Arkansas.

  Charlie Pierce

  Congratulations, Pride, Self

  "Black Like Him: Obama's Narrow Path to Reelection" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. July 23, 2015.

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• We have a revolutionary history to honor and uphold. Which was what Nelson Mandela did. He reminded us of that which we need to be reminded, over and over again, about our own best selves.

  Charlie Pierce

  Self, Honor, Needs

  "Amandla" by Charlie Pierce, www.esquire.com. December 6, 2013.

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• I think, over the last couple of years, the written word has made a comeback on the Internet. For example, I'm seeing more long-form narrative experiments there. The overall noise level, however, continues to increase. Do we really need TV screens to watch when we pump gas? Really?

  Charlie Pierce

  Couple, Thinking, Comeback

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• There is a barbarism in the American soul, and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger our lives on the one hand, and our liberty on the other.

  Charlie Pierce

  Hands, Law, Roots

  "The Violence We Live With" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. April 18, 2013.

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• The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.

  Charlie Pierce

  College, Deceit, Fundamentals

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• According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.

  Charlie Pierce

  People, Office, Tolerance

  "Black Like Him: Obama's Narrow Path to Reelection". www.esquire.com. July 23, 2015.

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• The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics.

  Charlie Pierce

  Men, Modern, He Man

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• There is a reason why conservatives talk about 'government' and not 'self-government,' because to refer to the latter is to concede that 'the government' is really the most basic product of our political commonwealth, that it is what we produce among ourselves so as to order the production of everything else that we do together.

  Charlie Pierce

  Government, Self, Order

  "The President Finally Accepts America for Ourselves" by Charlie Pierce, www.esquire.com. July 27, 2015.

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