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

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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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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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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.
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Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive.
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Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.
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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
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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.
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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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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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when men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane.
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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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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 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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Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.
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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A great speech is literature.
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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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.
Peggy Noonan
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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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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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