Nancy Gibbs Quotes & Sayings

When I was coming out of college, storytelling was very much something you did with pencil and paper, so the technological platform versatility, I think, is really valuable. — Nancy Gibbs

After the 1960s and '70s, there were real doubts about whether a mortal man could handle the country's highest office. It had destroyed Johnson, corrupted Nixon, and overwhelmed Ford and Carter. — Nancy Gibbs

As a candidate, Obama disdained the game of politics, a self-conscious contrast to all the tireless political athletes named Clinton. — Nancy Gibbs

Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well. — Nancy Gibbs

Some people are born strong or stretchy, or with a tungsten will. — Nancy Gibbs

Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes. — Nancy Gibbs

As a final indignity for the defeated warrior, Vice President Nixon had to preside over the roll call of the Electoral College. "This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated," he told the assembled members of Congress. "I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system." He got a standing ovation. — Nancy Gibbs

A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights. — Nancy Gibbs

I feel like my competition is everything else that's competing for people's attention, not just other print magazines, newspapers and cable. It's your kid's report card and the games you want to play, all the things that compete for people's time. — Nancy Gibbs

Runners exalt the marathon as a public test of private will, when months or years of solitary training, early mornings, lost weekends, rain and pain mature into triumph or surrender. That's one reason the race-day crowds matter, the friends who come to cheer and stomp and flap their signs and push the runners on. — Nancy Gibbs

It is actually the neuroscientists and evolutionists who do the best job of explaining the reasons behind the most unreasonable behavior. — Nancy Gibbs

Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave. — Nancy Gibbs

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends. — Nancy Gibbs

In many parts of the world, more people have access to a mobile device than to a toilet or running water. — Nancy Gibbs

I've always found that once you're in the door of a place and you have the chance to show how you operate and how talented you are, then anything can happen. — Nancy Gibbs

Emotional life grows out of an area of the brain called the limbic system, specifically the amygdala, whence come delight and disgust and fear and anger. — Nancy Gibbs

Today's kids aren't taking up arms against their parents; they're too busy texting them. — Nancy Gibbs

If anything, the power of the cover of 'Time' has increased as the media landscape has atomized. — Nancy Gibbs

Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny. — Nancy Gibbs

For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high. — Nancy Gibbs

I come from a family of teachers, and I believe ideas matter; the good ones deserve reverence, and the bad ones, defiance. — Nancy Gibbs

Few Westerners know Iran as well as Robin Wright: her first trip there as a journalist was in 1973, and she has covered every important milestone since, from the Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis to the more recent staring contest with the West over Tehran's nuclear program. — Nancy Gibbs

In design as in life, smart can also mean wise, kind, inspiring - and cost-effective. And that has a charm all its own. — Nancy Gibbs

Members of royal families are born into a world of indulgence and entitlement, and the princelings who grow up that way may never have to develop any discipline. — Nancy Gibbs

There may be no less original idea than the notion that our hearts hold dominion over our heads. — Nancy Gibbs

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use. — Nancy Gibbs

When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak. — Nancy Gibbs

As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it. — Nancy Gibbs

Progress is seldom simple; it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat. — Nancy Gibbs

All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends. — Nancy Gibbs

Anyone with the right mix of parental paranoia and entrepreneurial moxie can make a fortune by selling parents the equipment we think will keep us one step ahead of our kids. — Nancy Gibbs

Time is valuable; people are busy. — Nancy Gibbs

War is being waged all across the country against the invasive plant and animal species - some 50,000 of them - now spreading across the U.S. — Nancy Gibbs

The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally. — Nancy Gibbs

Power is not just political. It can be cultural; it can be spiritual. — Nancy Gibbs

Sometimes justice is at its most merciful when it's blind. — Nancy Gibbs

A president can't go to every memorial service. — Nancy Gibbs

All our efforts to guard and guide our children may just get in the way of the one thing they need most from us: to be deeply loved yet left alone so they can try a new skill, new slang, new style, new flip-flops. So they can trip a few times, make mistakes, cross them out, try again, with no one keeping score. — Nancy Gibbs

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of church and state - so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire, and no one had a concordance to explain why it was all happening at once. — Nancy Gibbs

Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets. — Nancy Gibbs

Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves. — Nancy Gibbs

On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere. — Nancy Gibbs

If boomers were always looking to shock, millennials are eager to share. — Nancy Gibbs

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers. — Nancy Gibbs

The wand is mighter then the sword. — Nancy Gibbs

Even if it wasn't always morning in America during the years of his presidency, Reagan's eagerness to insist that it was tapped into a longing among voters. They didn't want to picture themselves turning down their thermostats and buttoning up their cardigans. They wanted to strut again. Reagan opened his arms and said, 'Walk this way.' — Nancy Gibbs

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines. — Nancy Gibbs

The modern Presidents Club was founded by two men who by all rights should have loathed each other. There was Harry Truman, the humble haberdasher from Missouri, hurled into office in the spring of 1945, summoning to the White House Herbert Hoover, a failed Republican president who had left town thirteen years earlier as the most hated man in America, his motorcades pelted with rotten fruit. They were political enemies and temperamental opposites. Where Truman was authentic, amiable, if prone to eruptions of temper, Hoover could be cold, humorless, incapable of small talk but ferociously sure of the rightness of his cause. — Nancy Gibbs

In the case of the classic Western helicopter parent, it starts with Baby Einstein and reward charts for toilet training, and it never really ends, which is why colleges have to devote so many resources to teaching parents how to leave their kids alone. — Nancy Gibbs

Teaching sometimes seems like not one profession, but every profession. We ask them to be doctor and diplomat, calf-herder, map-maker, wizard and watchman, electricians of the mind. — Nancy Gibbs

If compassion and mercy are not compatible with politics," Ford said, "then something is the matter with politics. — Nancy Gibbs

The real luxury travel of the modern age is not through space; it's through time. — Nancy Gibbs

There are many things that matter much more than an editor's gender in shaping the direction of the leadership. — Nancy Gibbs

Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine. — Nancy Gibbs

Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season - and so memories stir and startle. — Nancy Gibbs

I'm wondering how many elected figures any of us could find who do not, in the front or back of their minds, remember who does them favors, who doesn't. — Nancy Gibbs

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers. — Nancy Gibbs

There's a smartphone gait: the slow sidewalk weave that comes from being lost in conversation rather than looking where you're going. — Nancy Gibbs

Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips. — Nancy Gibbs

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. [ ... ] Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own. — Nancy Gibbs

You know the great thing about Truman," he told Goodwin, "is that once he makes up his mind about something - anything, including the A bomb - he never looks back and asks 'should I have done it? Oh! Should I have done it?' No, he just knows he made up his mind as best he could and that's that. There's no going back. I wish I had some of that quality. — Nancy Gibbs

Across much of the developing world, by the time she is 12, a girl is tending house, cooking, cleaning. She eats what's left after the men and boys have eaten; she is less likely to be vaccinated, to see a doctor, to attend school. — Nancy Gibbs

Accidents at power plants are bad enough. But a leak from a bioreactor could be worse, since bacteria can learn new tricks when you're not looking. — Nancy Gibbs

We want laws to be applied predictably. — Nancy Gibbs

His manner somehow friendly and courtly at the same time. — Nancy Gibbs

If Heaven is willing to sing to us, it is little to ask that we be ready to listen. — Nancy Gibbs

In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion. — Nancy Gibbs

Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do. — Nancy Gibbs

Pour a liquid out of its container, and it changes shape, fills the space you give it. If you give children a lot of space, it may surprise you where they'll go and the shape they'll take. — Nancy Gibbs

We've seen what happens when it serves a president's interest to flaunt his faith - which is almost inevitably does, since every poll affirms that Americans want their leader to submit to some higher power. — Nancy Gibbs

Nixon to Clinton: When seeking advice from people who are more experienced than you, tell them what you plan to do first, and then ask for their reaction. Don't ask for their advice, and then ignore it. That way you save on bruised feelings. — Nancy Gibbs

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. — Nancy Gibbs

Just because we eat together does not mean we eat right: Domino's alone delivers a million pizzas on an average day. — Nancy Gibbs

Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly - young and old, faithful and cynical - as has Pope Francis. — Nancy Gibbs

The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political - and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone's deeply held beliefs. — Nancy Gibbs

I would like to see every newspaper and every magazine have a network of bureaus all over the world, gathering news. — Nancy Gibbs

While many alien species are harmless, others pose expensive threats to seas and fields and forests. — Nancy Gibbs

Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager. — Nancy Gibbs

In modern warfare, journalists are among the first responders, seeking out truth in the turmoil and wreckage, wherever it takes them. — Nancy Gibbs

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright would baptize Obama, perform his marriage to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, baptize their daughters, and draw him into the raucous, restless family of faith that Obama had never known before. — Nancy Gibbs

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school. — Nancy Gibbs

While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice. — Nancy Gibbs

It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends. — Nancy Gibbs

The millennials were raised in a cocoon, their anxious parents afraid to let them go out in the park to play. So should we be surprised that they learned to leverage technology to build community, tweeting and texting and friending while their elders were still dialing long-distance? — Nancy Gibbs

'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept. — Nancy Gibbs

Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson. — Nancy Gibbs

Adolescence, that swampy zone between safety and power, is best patrolled by adults armed with sense and mercy, not guns and a badge. — Nancy Gibbs

Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down. — Nancy Gibbs

Making distinctions is part of learning. So is making mistakes. — Nancy Gibbs

occupying the office Hoover once — Nancy Gibbs

Our children will outwit us if they want; for when it comes to technology, they hold the higher ground. Unlike other tools passed carefully and ceremonially from one generation to the next - the sharp scissors, the car keys - this is one they understand better than we do. — Nancy Gibbs

My husband and I don't have sons, so we never had to ask ourselves how we'd have felt about them playing football. — Nancy Gibbs

We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames. — Nancy Gibbs

The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5. — Nancy Gibbs

Pain is the most private experience, but its causes, whether natural or man-made, demand public accounting. — Nancy Gibbs

Americans are grateful for the connection and convenience their phones provide, helping them search for a lower price, navigate a strange city, expand a customer base or track their health and finances, their family and friends. — Nancy Gibbs

Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise. — Nancy Gibbs

The leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 worldwide is not accident or violence or disease; it is complications from pregnancy. Girls under 15 are up to five times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well. — Nancy Gibbs

I'm sentimental about many things: the lumpy feel of a baby's unused feet, the metallic smell of the air before the first snow, the last scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' But Valentine's Day leaves me cold. — Nancy Gibbs

The one problem with the Internet for journalists who like doing long form is that any story that's going to involve 16 screens on the web page ... that's asking a lot of people. — Nancy Gibbs