Top 85 Helen Thomas Quotes
#1. We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.
Helen Thomas
#2. We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.
Helen Thomas
#3. If we lose our title of "land of the free," what have we got?
Helen Thomas
#4. George W. Bush is the worst President
in all of American history.
Helen Thomas
#5. If you want to be President, decide it at the age of five, and then live accordingly.
Helen Thomas
#6. We began to see the renovation of our offices as a subtle part of the Nixon war against the press.
Helen Thomas
#7. I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history
Helen Thomas
#8. Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
Helen Thomas
#9. I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.
Helen Thomas
#10. Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.
Helen Thomas
#11. We got the vote, which we should've been born with, in 1920. Everything we've had to struggle for - it's ridiculous.
Helen Thomas
#12. The presidential news conference is indispensable because it is the only forum in our society where you can be questioned on a regular basis and held accountable.
Helen Thomas
#13. We are the only institution in our society that can question a president on a regular basis and make him accountable. Otherwise, he could be king.
Helen Thomas
#14. I think that presidents deserve to be questioned. Maybe irreverently, most of the time. Bring 'em down a size. You see a president, ask a question. You have one chance in the barrel. Don't blow it.
Helen Thomas
#15. I think I'll work all my life. When you're having fun, why stop having fun?
Helen Thomas
#16. I don't think there are any rude questions.
Helen Thomas
#17. I think Obama is handling his image very well, but I think he lacks boldness.
Helen Thomas
#18. The United States has tried for years to live down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order during World War II to move Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to inland detention camps on grounds that they might be disloyal.
Helen Thomas
#19. I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you're dead, you're dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don't go to hell.
Helen Thomas
#20. I love my work, and I think that I was so lucky to pick a profession where it's a joy to go to work every day.
Helen Thomas
#21. I was in Independence, Missouri when Johnson signed the Medicare bill, with Truman standing there. Truman had first proposed Medicare, but couldn't get it through.
Helen Thomas
#22. You cannot criticize Israel in this country (USA) and survive
Helen Thomas
#24. I have a background and an understanding of what's happened in the Middle East that a lot of people don't have, because there's been no interest.
Helen Thomas
#25. Clinton is the first female to be taken seriously for the highest office in the land. She has the credentials, the stamina and she is a good campaigner. Her detractors in both parties like to say she can't win, but they may be proven wrong.
Helen Thomas
#26. The sudden ending of a White House career all seems so unceremonious for aides who have personally sacrificed a lot - and sometimes even bent their conscience - to do the president's bidding.
Helen Thomas
#27. Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.
Helen Thomas
#28. Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.
Helen Thomas
#29. It's time for women to make their voices heard. Their silence on the subject of war and peace is deafening.
Helen Thomas
#30. Maybe the Jefferson case will give members of Congress second thoughts the next time they get ready to legislate away the rights of ordinary Americans.
Helen Thomas
#31. When you speak of the press, of course, you have to speak of different segments of the press. Reporters, straight reporters, wire services, you stick to the facts; you don't create the story, per se. You cover what is happening.
Helen Thomas
#32. I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter. Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'
Helen Thomas
#33. Presidents hate the press. They hate me most of the time.
Helen Thomas
#34. If we care about the children, the grandchildren, the future generations, we need to make sure that they do not become the cannon fodder of the future.
Helen Thomas
#35. President Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights, and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.
Helen Thomas
#36. Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies.
Helen Thomas
#37. When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.
Helen Thomas
#38. I got into the Kennedy White House because at the time I was president of the Women's National Press Club, and they assigned me to cover the early days of the Kennedy campaign. Jackie especially. Everyone was interested in the family.
Helen Thomas
#39. The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.
Helen Thomas
#40. I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.
Helen Thomas
#41. The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.
Helen Thomas
#42. Great presidents take stands, and they fight off these people who really are so far to the right. I don't want to call them names, even though they would call me names.
Helen Thomas
#43. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists.
Helen Thomas
#44. But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.
Helen Thomas
#45. I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.
Helen Thomas
#46. We won't really know what will happen until it happens.
Helen Thomas
#47. I've never covered the president in any way other than that he is ultimately responsible.
Helen Thomas
#48. To my mind, a president should care about all people, and he didn't, which is why I will always feel Reagan lacked soul.
Helen Thomas
#49. I'm covering the worst president in American history.
Helen Thomas
#50. Don't let the politicians chip away at the New Deal and the Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare, that puts a floor beyond which the elderly, the sick, the powerless do not starve or lack for medicine or shelter.
Helen Thomas
#52. We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel. You can't open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but if you say one thing about Israel, and you're off limits.
Helen Thomas
#53. American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic.
Helen Thomas
#54. I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.
Helen Thomas
#55. It's like I say to young people who ask me about going into journalism: If you want to be loved, don't go into this business.
Helen Thomas
#57. Life is too short to drink the house wine.
Helen Thomas
#58. Presidential power was overruled by the high bench in July 1974, when President Nixon was ordered to turn over some audio tapes of his White House conversations, including the 'smoking gun' tape of June 23, 1972, that revealing the Watergate cover up.
Helen Thomas
#59. Anybody who runs for public office today has got to know his life or her life will be an open book. I've decided that if you want to run for public office you have to decide at the age of 5 and live accordingly.
Helen Thomas
#61. I had a lot of fun bantering back and forth with Kennedy. But for ease and comfort, it would be Gerald Ford. He was a down-home type. I came from the Midwest and he came from the Midwest. He was nonaggressive and kindly.
Helen Thomas
#62. As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.
Helen Thomas
#63. You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.
Helen Thomas
#64. I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, I'll be one till I die. What else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?
Helen Thomas
#65. You didn't tell a lie, you just left a big hole in the truth.
Helen Thomas
#66. All of us who covered the Reagans agreed that President Reagan was personable and charming, but I'm not so certain he was nice. It's hard for me to think of anyone as 'nice' when I hear him say 'The homeless are homeless because they want to be homeless.'
Helen Thomas
#67. We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is ... We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.
Helen Thomas
#68. Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch.
Helen Thomas
#69. We in the press have a special role since there is no other institution in our society that can hold the President accountable. I do believe that our democracy can endure and prevail only if the American people are informed.
Helen Thomas
#70. I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press.
Helen Thomas
#71. Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.
Helen Thomas
#72. I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants ... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.
Helen Thomas
#73. I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, and I will be a liberal 'til the day I die.
Helen Thomas
#74. You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.
Helen Thomas
#75. You cannot have a democracy without an informed people.
Helen Thomas
#76. People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.
Helen Thomas
#77. I'll tell you how I handle stress. I say-This too shall pass. You've got to try to stay cool and admit when you're wrong, and tell them when you're right.
Helen Thomas
#78. There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.
Helen Thomas
#79. All presidents rail against the press. It goes with the turf.
Helen Thomas
#80. I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.
Helen Thomas
#81. Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.
Helen Thomas
#82. In Plains, I saw Jimmy Carter as he really is - a nice, decent man ... in terms of compassionate contribution to society, he certainly has proven to be our best past president.
Helen Thomas
#84. I'm decrepit but I don't want to give up, and I love my work.
Helen Thomas
#85. I can remember the morning after President Nixon won re-election in 1972. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called a Cabinet meeting and told the members: 'You are all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes;' and asked for their resignations.
Helen Thomas
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