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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.'

Peggy Noonan

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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
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Came
Asks
Presidential
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More quotes by Peggy Noonan

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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor.
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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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Wit penetrates humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence humor is imagination operating on good nature.
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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.
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Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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when men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane.
Peggy Noonan
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Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.
Peggy Noonan
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Abortion is either OK or it's not.
Peggy Noonan
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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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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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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
Peggy Noonan
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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.
Peggy Noonan