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
Kind
Speech
Eulogy
Love
Meaning
Ragged
Short
Pluck
Emotion
Susceptible
Moving
Fog
Order
Leap
Stills
Attempt
Still
Emotions
Leaps

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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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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?
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Abortion is either OK or it's not.
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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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The tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.
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Wit penetrates humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence humor is imagination operating on good nature.
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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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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.
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In ancient Israel and Rome the judge had appeared as a stand-in for the divine, and corruption was a blinding of the representative of the divine.
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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.
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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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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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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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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?
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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In the 1950s and '60s the [democrat] party included many obviously earnest and thoughtful liberals who supported goals that were in line with and expressions of serious beliefs. They believed that America was an exceptional country.
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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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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.
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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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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