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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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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Public
Badly
Politics
Strings
Need
Accomplishment
Needs
Enter
Way
Service
Life
Tradition
Accomplishments
Build
String
Return
Earn

More quotes by 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.
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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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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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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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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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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.
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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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when men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane.
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Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.
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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.
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Abortion is either OK or it's not.
Peggy Noonan
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Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions.
Peggy Noonan
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Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.
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.
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
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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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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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.
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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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