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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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Presidential
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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.
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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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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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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Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions.
Peggy Noonan
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The Democratic Party will now stick with its guy forever, no matter how harmful he is. Perhaps you call that loyalty, and perhaps there's something to it, but a bigger part, I believe, is that you have come to think that winning is everything-that victory is the purpose of politics.
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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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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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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Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.
Peggy Noonan
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Wit penetrates humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence humor is imagination operating on good nature.
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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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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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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.
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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[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.
Peggy Noonan
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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