Famous Quotes & Sayings

Peggy Noonan Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Peggy Noonan.

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Famous Quotes By Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 2099034

Part of courage is simple consistency. — Peggy Noonan

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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 — Peggy Noonan

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Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 339179

What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace - a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we're in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported. — Peggy Noonan

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Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill. Never take the country down the road to 'Demon Pass.' — Peggy Noonan

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Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out. — 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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 950381

By trying to do too much, you risk not doing enough. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1638583

One way to keep people close to you is by not giving them enough ... with people who give a lot of themselves, you sometimes lean back - but with people who give little you often lean forward, as if they're a spigot in the desert and you're the empty cup. It is the tropism of deprivation: We lean toward those who do not give. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 743498

Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 319780

The president - every president - works for us. We don't work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be. — Peggy Noonan

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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 640626

But one immediate thing can be done right now, and that is: lower the temperature. Any way you can, and everybody. Just lower it. — Peggy Noonan

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This is the Democratic paradox: You want so much to run America and yet you seem not so fond of Americans. — 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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Our work is a vocation to which we have been called from the beginning of time. When we work we are partaking in and joining with God's ongoing creation of the world. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 158074

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

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Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 324375

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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TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1610593

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else. — Peggy Noonan

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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. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1628558

Let's cause some senators distress. — 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"? — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1524609

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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1633485

Things change. Time changes them. Great nations, and institutions, rethink. But only if they're great. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1498222

Here is my concern. There are not fewer children living stressed, chaotic lives in America now, there are more. There will be more still, because among the things America no longer manufactures is stability. And the culture around them will not protect them, as the culture protected me. The culture around them will make their lives harder, more frightening, more dangerous. They are going to come up with nothing to believe in, their nerves essentially shot. And they're going to be - they are already - very angry. — 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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1414537

[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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Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to, said Ronald Reagan. — Peggy Noonan

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Humor is the shock absorber of life; it helps us take the blows. — Peggy Noonan

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The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six years and yet exhausted. They're pale, tired, and unready. Too bad, since it's their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1341827

Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH. — Peggy Noonan

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What Andrew Cuomo said is, truly, a scandal. It's a scandal if he actually thinks it - that those who hold conservative views on abortion, gun rights and marriage are extreme, anathema and have no place in the state. — Peggy Noonan

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All great political families have myths: stories they tell themselves about how history happened. — Peggy Noonan

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Prayer is the hardest thing. And no one congratulates you for doing it because no one knows you're doing it, and if things turn out well they likely won't thank God in any case. But I have a feeling that the hardest thing is what we all better be doing now, and that it's not only the best answer but the only one. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 2243933

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 — Peggy Noonan

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You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 2230017

Where others teach that man does not find himself until he finds God, John Paul gives an empathetic yes and then adds this: Man does not become his truest and most real self unless and John Paul believed that man is by nature part of a whole, that he does not exist alone. He lives in society with other men, who are, like him, God's children. And it is in giving to man, in giving until it hurts, that man in the deepest way finds God. For God himself is a constant giving. (p 126-127) — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 2208820

There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too. — Peggy Noonan

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I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps. — Peggy Noonan

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Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on. — Peggy Noonan

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The core of the concept of a bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised. — Peggy Noonan

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The first snow always startles. It covers the tricycle in the driveway, turning its frame into an abstact sculpture that says: See how quickly yesterday turns into today. — 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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 2037637

You shouldn't hold on to things, to neuroses. People-artists-think they have to hold on to their neuroses, their pains, or they won't be a good actor anymore or a good artist. That's the Liar. The Liar tells you that. You hold on to them, you'll just wind up a lonely person. People become lonely with them, and the fame has moved on to someone else. You have to heal, you have to maintain relationships... That's why we say the Our Father: 'Deliver us from evil — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1705137

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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The Democratic Party's complete obeisance to [the abortion] lobby makes Democrats look bought, frightened and craven. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1985174

Our patriotic fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries. Other nations had evolved one way or another, evolved from tribes from a gathering of clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born, and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1920296

Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He's the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1886702

The Pope replied, "of what should we not be afraid? We should not fear the truth about ourselves." He spoke of how Saint Peter himself, the rock on which Christ had built his church, had told Christ to leave him, "for I am a sinful man." Peter was a sinful man. We all are, including popes. We are imperfect and "our hearts are anxious." But we cannot and should not let the fact of our unworthiness and flaws and failures build that wall with a kind of inverted pride that says, Oh, I'm so unworthy, and I'd know how unworthy I am better than you would. — Peggy Noonan

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The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us. — Peggy Noonan

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He [Pope Benedict XVI] spoke of the distilled message of John Paul's reign: Be not afraid — 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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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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1754723

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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 397318

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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Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money ... — 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 biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore. — Peggy Noonan

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I was starting to feel that Washington was a city run by two rival gangs that had a great deal in common with each other, including an essential lack of interest in the well-being of the turf on which they fought. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 545487

Do not be afriad! I can see that Americans are not afraid. They are not afraid of the sun, they are not afraid of the wind, they are not afraid of 'today'. They are, generally speaking, brave, good people. And so I say to you today, always be brave. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. God is with you. Do not be afraid to search for God-then you will truly be the land of the free, the home of the brave. God Bless America. — Peggy Noonan

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I ought to pray as much as God's on my mind, because then I'd pray a lot. All I can tell you is God is real, and so that infuses everything. — Peggy Noonan

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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered. — Peggy Noonan

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A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. — Peggy Noonan

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When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink. — Peggy Noonan

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I was sailing from tedium to apathy with a side trip to torpor. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 676791

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant ... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever ... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 377797

One senses with so many Democrats who support the Clintons an unspoken sentence: "They're all we have." They're the only big national winners the party has left. I always want to say to them: That's not true, you've got better than that, you've got good people, go look and you will find them. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 344971

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. — Peggy Noonan

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I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor. — 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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Word of the day- kakistocracy. From the Greek meaning government by the worst persons, least qualified or most unprincipled. — Peggy Noonan

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Abortion is either OK or it's not. — Peggy Noonan

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You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 129894

I further know that if God has something special for you, you have a knowledge of it inside you, which causes you not to be satisfied with anything that isn't this thing. You're "restless" until you find it. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 110337

I always got the feeling with John Paul that if he could have narrowed down the people he met and blessed those he loved the most, they would not be cardinals, princes, or congressman, but nuns from obscure convents and Down syndrome children, especially the latter. Because they have suffered, and because in some serious and amazing way the love of God seems more immediately available to them. Everyone else gets themselves tied up in ambition and ideas and bustle, all the great distractions, but the modest and unwell are so often unusually open to this message: God loves us, his love is all around us, he made us to love him and be happy — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 98231

You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them. — Peggy Noonan

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As we have become more open minded (tolerant) in society we have become more closed hearted. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1267078

Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1245463

[On President Clinton's address:] It was the worst inaugural address of our lifetime, and I think the only controversy will be between those who say it was completely and utterly banal and those who say, 'Well, not completely and utterly. — Peggy Noonan

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The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1185684

My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1178305

But what is happening in America today is, I think, unparalleled in history. We are rising to the top and falling to the bottom; we are becoming wealthier as individuals and baser as a society; we are more powerful than ever and less mindful; we share a level of prosperity that is so high that it is a new thing in history, unprecedented in the story of man, and yet this wonderful thing we share has not made us closer as a people. And this has implications. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 85018

There is nothing wrong with being a declared liberal or conservative and conducting a sympathetic interview with a political figure who shares your views. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1050532

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined brand,- as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership. — Peggy Noonan

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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

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Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything. — Peggy Noonan

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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

Peggy Noonan Quotes 1276621

Novak was saying that the pope's message was in part: You are not nothing; you are a great deal. God made you in his image, and he calls you to be like him. And so you must walk forward in to the world each day with confidence and humility. This reminded me of what a woman in Bible study said once. Walk with pride, for you are the daughter of a king. — Peggy Noonan

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Everyone over 50 in America feels like a refugee. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because parenting is hard. Inadequate parents could say, 'Go outside and play in the culture,' and the culture
relatively innocent, and boring
could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Grown ups now know that you can't send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. — Peggy Noonan

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In ancient Israel and Rome the judge had appeared as a stand-in for the divine, and corruption was a blinding of the representative of the divine. — Peggy Noonan

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Hubert Humphrey's wife is said to have advised him: Darling, for a speech to be immortal it need not be interminable. — Peggy Noonan

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I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves. — Peggy Noonan

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George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. — 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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I guess the second-term team is not quite as adoring as the first. — Peggy Noonan

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I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see. — Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan Quotes 742260

I now know that God has a plan for each of us. The thing is to find out what it is. How? Through prayer, through keeping your mind open, and trough the circumstances of daily life and the people you meet. — Peggy Noonan