“I have always tried to remember that I am not important, and no one elected me to anything. But I was doing a necessary job.”
— Rob Cristensen, retiring after 45 years covering North Carolina politics for the News & Observer.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
— Mark Twain
“An imperfect man, he left us with a more perfect union.”
–John Meacham about President George Herbert Walker Bush at Bush’s funeral
“George H.W. Bush was a wonderful human being who possessed a strong faith in God and believed there is greatness in each of us. The Occasion of his passing should serve as a reminder that we can – by living life to the fullest, keeping our eyes on the common good and working together – build a more perfect union here at home and a more peaceful world abroad.”
–Jeb Bush and James Baker [WP 12/4/18]
“I don’t want to be president…My path has never been politics. I just happened to marry someone whose passion was politics. Just because he likes it doesn’t mean that I like it.”
–Michelle Obama
“Hatred corrodes the container it is carried in.”
–Chinese proverb
“Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.”
–Elizabeth Taylor
“I’ve been ambitious my whole life. It’s not a dirty word. I want to be rich!”
–Aminatou Sow, New York Times
“There is something about the American spirit – about the bedrock decency and common sense of the American – that seems to help us find our way, something about American history that redeems itself in a way that inspires us all. I would summarize it by quoting my favorite pundit, Otto von Bismarck. He was not known for his punditry, but he is famously said to have said: ‘God looks after children, drunkards, idiots and the United States of America.’ I think He still does. I hope he still does.”
–Charles Krauthammer, The Enduring Miracle of the American Constitution
“It’s the old cliché where geniuses built the system so an idiot could run it. We are completely testing that theory at this very moment.”
–Bruce Springsteen
“Women belong in all places where decisions are made.”
–Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg