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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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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Life
Tell
Leaders
People
Shows
National
Political
Begin
Country
Grace
Must
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Polls
Trying
Alive
Maturity
Long
Wisdom
Priorities
Really
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Forgiveness

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Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.
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My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.
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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.
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Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.
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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.
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Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.
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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
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At some point, don't voters start to see all of public life as one big polluted river? And if they do, don't they stop saying things like That's a busted tire floating by and That's an old shoe?
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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
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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.
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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.
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Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.
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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
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[On President Clinton's address:] It was the worst inaugural address of our lifetime, and I think the only controversy will be between those who say it was completely and utterly banal and those who say, 'Well, not completely and utterly.
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A great speech is literature.
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.'
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Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions.
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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
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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.
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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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