Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Legislative language is governed by a law of etymology that is also the ancient code of the bureaucracy: It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be close enough for government work. If they understand what you mean, it doesn't matter what you say or how you say it. "

Related Quotes:

" The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits. "

Molly Ivins

Trouble

Powerful

Employees

" Rove, of course, is an exceptionally good, exceptionally skillful campaign guy, and Bush himself is really gifted at the political end of politics. But he's always been, as he says, misunderestimated. "

" From orphanages to space colonies, it was all shallow but endearingly enthusiastic futurism. Gingrich was the kind of person who read a book or two on something and would then be quite afire as to how this was going to fit into some shining future. "

" Laura Bush, it seems, is used to cast a softer light on her husband, who then proceeds to reverse whatever she's just promised. "

" I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits. "

" Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do. "

Molly Ivins

Unlike

Guns

" Laws were changed and regulations repealed until an Enron can set sail without responsibility, supervision, or accountability. "

" I intensely covered Bush when he was Governor of Texas. "

Molly Ivins

Governor

Intensely

" I wouldn't say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It's just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills. "

" The idols of one's adolescence tend to endure - you never forget how you worshipped them. "

" It is the stories we don't get, the ones we miss, pass over, fail to recognize, don't pick up on, that will send us to hell. "

Molly Ivins

Stories

Will

" Old-fashioned anti-immigrant prejudice always brings out some old-fashioned racists. "

" We need to reform the political system, or we'll lose the democracy. I don't think it's that hard. It doesn't take rocket science. We've done it before successfully at the presidential level and tried it several places at the state level. "

" I think one can easily make a case for taking out Saddam Hussein. In fact, one could probably be made on humanitarian grounds alone. But just as there's a downside risk to doing nothing about this man, there is a very serious downside risk to invading the country. "

" Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. "

" I spend most of my life feeling like I've been shot out of a cannon. "

" All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun. "

" I really think the single most important thing to remember about trying to fix the schools is that there is no such thing as an instant result. "

" A teenage foot that never tapped to 'Heartbreak Hotel' in the '50s probably belonged to a hopeless grind. "

" What we call politics now and what most political writers write about is the empathy and the bonding and the word choice and the horse rights, and it has nothing to do with what's really happening to people's lives. "

" I have always been a left-winger and an outsider. I loved being that. I was perfectly cheerful with that role. Then suddenly, you're one of the talking heads on 'Nightline,' and you think you must have sold out. "

" I spent my girlhood as a Clydesdale among thoroughbreds. "

Molly Ivins

Spent

Among

" Texas is still resistant to Howard Johnsons, interstate highways and some forms of phoniness. It is the place least likely to become a replica of everyplace else. It's authentically awful, comic, and weirdly charming, all at the same time. "

" I left the 'Trib' in 1970 with the feeling that I would never have a career in establishment media of any kind. "

" I'm sorry to say cancer can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person. "

" If Bush does make it to the White House, he and Laura should have Ken Starr over for dinner. "

" Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse. "

" In Congress, there are some who are unashamed to aspire to eloquence, even to scholarship, but the only state legislator I ever knew who would not join in the mispronounceciation of a word for the sake of camaraderie with her fellows was former State Senator and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. "

" I only aim at the powerful. "

" To mistake Midland for the volk heartland is the West Texas equivalent of assuming that Greenwich, Connecticut, is Levittown. "