Quote

I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.

Peggy Noonan

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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Stills
Attempt
Still
Emotions
Leaps
Kind
Speech
Eulogy
Love
Meaning
Ragged
Short
Pluck
Emotion
Susceptible
Moving
Fog
Order
Leap

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.
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Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.
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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
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It's better for the country when each party looks like it stands for something serious, for some big things, but they're not narrow and they're not bought.
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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.
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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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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.
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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.
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Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.
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when men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane.
Peggy Noonan
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The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy.
Peggy Noonan
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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
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Abortion is either OK or it's not.
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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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
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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 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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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
Peggy Noonan