Top 99 Molly Ivins Quotes

Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?

Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

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.

When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel – it’s vulgar.

There is never anyone quite so wonderful as the people who were seniors when you were a freshman.

Don’t get me started about the media double standard.

I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were ‘German dogs.’ They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.

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

The stakes they play for in politics are paper and money. The chips they play with are your life.

There’s been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn’t work.

The uproar of the late ’60s – the antiwar movement, black riots, angry women. It was a wonderful time.

The most unusual thing about Clinton as a pol is that he listens. Listens and remembers. If he does dance with them that brung him, not them that gave him big money, we will have a populist on our hands.

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

Truth is, I’ve spent much of my life trying, unsuccessfully, to explode the myths about Texas.

I’ve always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.

If Democrats in Washington haven’t got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

‘The New York Times’ is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.

Should a girl like me, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Sen. Phil Gramm? Nah. But it’s tempting.

One of the few things I like about Bill Clinton is that he has very good manners. If his momma were still alive, I would congratulate her.

People asked me during the Iraq war if I was afraid to speak out. I said no.

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.

Havin’ fun while freedom fightin’ must be one of those lunatic Texas traits we get from the water – which is known to have lithium in it – because it goes all the way back to Sam Houston, surely the most lovable, the most human, and the funniest of all the great men this country has ever produced.

Sometimes misunderstandings between bloggers and the MSM are the result of simple ignorance.

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.

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 only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel – it’s vulgar.

So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.

‘Get along, go along’ is not an inspirational philosophy, and only God knows how much moral cowardice it has covered up over the years. Serve your time, collect your chits, and cash ’em in for your home state? No, I’d say we could ask for more than that from our senators.

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.

How come trying to explode myths about Texas always winds up reinforcing them?

I don’t have any children, so I’ve decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.

One seldom expects the country’s president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter’s assessment of Elvis Presley’s appeal – ‘energy, rebelliousness and good humor’ – is remarkably close to the mark.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

The trouble with capitalism as a system is that only those who have or can get capital can make it work for them, and that leaves out damn near all of us.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

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

Even for southerners, Arkansans are amazingly friendly and extend hospitality to all strangers with astonishing openness. You couldn’t find a pretension in that state if you hunted from Jonesboro to El Dorado.

Preemptive war is what Israel did in ’67 with Arab armies on its borders.

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.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera is that we in Texas don’t have to run around getting all hysterical about immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it up; when you don’t, you shut it down. It works to our benefit – it always has.

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

I don’t think I’ve decided much in my life. Don’t you think life just happens?

The idols of one’s adolescence tend to endure – you never forget how you worshipped them.

Jimmy Carter was unquestionably the most moral president of my lifetime, but he wasn’t much of a president.

I’ve always had trouble with male authority figures because my father was such a martinet.

I had sort of given up on conventional journalism. I found it far too restrictive.

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part and discuss it only with consenting adults.

The thing is this: You got to have fun while you’re fightin’ for freedom, ’cause you don’t always win.

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.

You look at the large problems that we face – that would be overpopulation, water shortages, global warming and AIDS, I suppose – all of that needs international cooperation to be solved.

The Federal Reserve system obviously doesn’t work anymore – they keep lowering the federal discount rate, and all that happens is that the banks are making a fortune, and the old folks’ CDs are getting chewed up.

The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn’t admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn’t just get a head start by being his father’s son – it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.

I saw a shrink because I thought I suffered from fear of success.

Those who imagine polygamy to be handy cover for promiscuity are apparently off the mark. If polygamists share one quality, it is that, polygamy aside, they are extraordinarily strait-laced.

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.

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

The only reason to have a positive mental attitude is that it makes life better. It doesn’t cure cancer.

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.

I only aim at the powerful.

Public campaign financing isn’t perfect and can doubtlessly be improved upon as we go.

Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.