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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.
– Peggy Noonan
Part of courage is simple consistency.
– Peggy Noonan
Read good, big important things.
– 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
You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone.
– Peggy Noonan
Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try.
– 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
Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.
– Peggy Noonan
Candor is a compliment it implies equality. It's how true friends talk.