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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

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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Good
Cynicism
Realistic
Tough
Wisdom
Means
Housekeeping
Mean
Unrealistic
Trying
Cynic
Kind
Cowardly

More quotes by Peggy Noonan

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Part of courage is simple consistency.
Peggy Noonan
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I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.
Peggy Noonan
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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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A great speech is literature.
Peggy Noonan
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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?
Peggy Noonan
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Ted Sorrenson, JFK's presidential speech writer, when asked how it came about that he wrote the ask not what you can do... speech, he would answer 'ask not.'
Peggy Noonan
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The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.
Peggy Noonan
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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
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The Democratic Party will now stick with its guy forever, no matter how harmful he is. Perhaps you call that loyalty, and perhaps there's something to it, but a bigger part, I believe, is that you have come to think that winning is everything-that victory is the purpose of politics.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.
Peggy Noonan
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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
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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Wit penetrates humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan
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Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.
Peggy Noonan
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Abortion is either OK or it's not.
Peggy Noonan