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We are the only institution in our society that can question a president on a regular basis and make him accountable. Otherwise, he could be king.

Helen Thomas

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Helen Thomas
Age: 92 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 4
Died: 2013
Died: July 20
Author
Journalist
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
Helen Amelia Thomas
Society
Regular
President
Basis
Make
Bases
King
Otherwise
Institutions
Kings
Accountable
Question
Institution

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If we lose our title of land of the free, what have we got?
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I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you're dead, you're dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don't go to hell.
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But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.
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Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies.
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People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.
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Every President hates the Press.
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The United States has tried for years to live down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order during World War II to move Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to inland detention camps on grounds that they might be disloyal.
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You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.
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We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.
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I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press.
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I had a lot of fun bantering back and forth with Kennedy. But for ease and comfort, it would be Gerald Ford. He was a down-home type. I came from the Midwest and he came from the Midwest. He was nonaggressive and kindly.
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I can remember the morning after President Nixon won re-election in 1972. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called a Cabinet meeting and told the members: 'You are all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes' and asked for their resignations.
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Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.
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I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, and I will be a liberal 'til the day I die.
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All presidents rail against the press. It goes with the turf.
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I have a background and an understanding of what's happened in the Middle East that a lot of people don't have, because there's been no interest.
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I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.
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Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
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I think that presidents deserve to be questioned. Maybe irreverently, most of the time. Bring 'em down a size. You see a president, ask a question. You have one chance in the barrel. Don't blow it.
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You cannot have a democracy without an informed people.
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