Noonan Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite an unimpressive first term in office, which featured huge tax cuts
for the wealthiest Americans and tax increases for everyone else, Reagan was
reelected in 1984 in an unprecedented landslide, winning forty-nine of the
fifty states against hapless Democrat Walter Mondale. While he has become
the patron saint of all Republicans, especially those who revel in wearing the
"conservative" mantle, Reagan's record is far, far removed from his rhetoric.
Despite this, the collective delusion of his supporters is best exemplified by
noted Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan's claims, regarding his 1980
campaign promises, that they were "Done, done, done, done, done, done and
done. Every bit of it. — Donald Jeffries

Loyalty consists of many things, including being truthful with our friends. When you really disagree, you have to say so. — Peggy Noonan

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

Want to read my most favorites books? They are Wildflowers, Bridie's Daughter, and Secrets! You'll be glad you did! — Robert Noonan

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

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

This is the Democratic paradox: You want so much to run America and yet you seem not so fond of Americans. — Peggy Noonan

Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived. — Peggy Noonan

I find this to be true of my spiritual life, and maybe it applies to yours as well: I think about things more than I do them; I ponder what seems their goodness more than I perform them. As if my thought alone were enough. But a thought alone isn't quite enough; it's an impulse and not a commitment, a passing thing that doesn't take root unless you plant it and make it grow. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

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

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

A great speech is literature. — Peggy Noonan

When men in politics are together, testosterone poisoning makes them insane. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving. — Katie Noonan

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

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents. — Peggy Noonan

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

Suddenly all I wanted to do was watch Gronk do his thang-thang in the zone place there. My vagina demanded it. — Lacey Noonan

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

Christ almighty, Noonan, quit it, I told myself. She's three years old and you've already got her with three kids of her own, two with ringworm and one retarded. — Stephen King

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

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

Let's cause some senators distress. — Peggy Noonan

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

On a clear night, look up and count the stars and hold onto that number and know that I love you more. I will always love you. — Rosalind Noonan

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

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

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

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

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

The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial, — Peggy Noonan

[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

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

walked down the hill and stuck out my thumb, standing in the same spot where I had stood when I hitchhiked to high school. My clothes and gear were in my official Boy Scout backpack, a big old thing on an aluminum rack, with my sleeping bag and pup tent lashed to it. I'd been a serious Boy Scout - I joined at 12, after my failed Little League career, and took to it immediately, racking up merit badges and making it all the way to Eagle Scout. I knew first aid, how to start a fire in the rain, how to make a mean camp stew, and lots of other useful stuff. And I didn't mind sleeping outside, which was a good thing, since there was no way I could afford motels. My official Boy Scout sheath knife, a serious piece of business with a leather-wrapped handle and a five-inch blade, was also in the pack; I'd move it into my boot by the end of the first day. — David Noonan

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

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

When you have kids, you just can't believe your heart could love something so much. My kids inspire me every day and I think I'm a better singer now because they have given me a greater emotional well to draw from. — Katie Noonan

[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

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

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

That's the point of miracles - to point us beyond our world to another world. They are clues that that other world is not in our imaginations but is actually out there, wherever "out there" actually is. Peggy Noonan once wrote that she thought miracles existed "in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see." If miracles exist at all, they exist not for their own sake but for us, to point us toward something beyond. To someone beyond. — Eric Metaxas

To me, acting doesn't really feel that different, one job to another. — Tom Noonan

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

I've dreamt again of Manderley. — Mike Noonan

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

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

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away. — Tom Noonan

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

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

I've always been a know-it-all. I drive a lot of people a bit crazy. But I can't seem to help it. — Tom Noonan

The whole idea of WHAT HAPPENED WAS ... is not about dating. It is more about people who are not committed to who they are or are indifferent about their life in general, which is how I felt about myself when I wrote it. I had turned 40 and I was unhappy and I wanted to write about that. Dating just became the framework ... I like all those fringy, weird, nonverbal, quiet, tiny little things, those powerful interchanges between people, things that go unsaid, that people know are happening all the time but nobody wants to talk about. That's what I want to make movies about. — Tom Noonan

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

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

When I first started acting, somebody once said to me that anything that is a problem that prevents you from getting a job will eventually be a strength. It works both ways. The odder you are, the harder it is to get work, but once you sort of establish it, you have no competition. — Tom Noonan

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

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

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

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

I've done a lot of action movies, and there has to be a certain amount of emotion in the actual performing of the stunt. It doesn't have to be any particular emotion, but there has to be some life to it, and that's not so easy. — Tom Noonan

Word of the day- kakistocracy. From the Greek meaning government by the worst persons, least qualified or most unprincipled. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

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

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

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

I had an amazing advantage: a grandmother [Polly Noonan, an influential confidante of the mayor of Albany] who loved politics. She taught me not to listen to negative press or people. I grew up knowing politics was rough-and-tumble. — Kirsten Gillibrand

Women are sexy when they dance- incredibly sexy- but that wasn't what i reacted to, or how i reacted. — Mike Noonan

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

What I got was not so much gifts and whishes come trues but a feeling of peace. I got peace itself, actually. And when you have peace, you can be strong; and when you are strong, you can get through what you have to get through, and not with exhaustion and frown marks and slumped shoulders but with relative happiness, and humor, and sometimes even gaiety. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

I think I probably have a creepy kind of scary quality. Otherwise, I wouldn't get jobs. But I also think it has a little bit to do with, you've done it a couple times, and then people see you that way. — Tom Noonan

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

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

I tend to be very private. It's easier for me. When you're acting, you're very susceptible to comments that somebody makes, so if they know something is going to happen on the show, and they say something, it can actually throw you off. So I tend to not share things with anybody. — Tom Noonan

The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less. — Peggy Noonan

I guess the second-term team is not quite as adoring as the first. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

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

Ambition is the ecclesiastical lust. — Daniel Noonan

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

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

The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore. — Peggy Noonan

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

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

I think that's what happens when you get scared, and you're rushing, and you don't have time. Rather than cut things out and take a chance, and build things up you think are working, you cut everything down a little bit, and everything sort of suffers. — Tom Noonan

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