Molly Ivins Quotes

#1. The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.

Molly Ivins

#2. Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.

Molly Ivins

#3. You could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.

Molly Ivins

#4. The first rule of holes: When you're in one stop digging.

Molly Ivins

#5. You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.

Molly Ivins

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

Molly Ivins

#7. Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit.

Molly Ivins

#8. Behind a smoke screen of high-profile female appointees and soothing slogans, George W. Bush is waging war on women.

Molly Ivins

#9. One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't was a lot of time thinking about the people who build their pyramids, either.

Molly Ivins

#10. With politicians, artful evasion is always preferable to the outright lie.

Molly Ivins

#11. Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.
[Shrub Flubs His Dub, The Nation, June 18, 2001]

Molly Ivins

#12. I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing.

Molly Ivins

#13. I know: "Guns Don't Kill People." But I suspect that they have something to do with it. If you point your finger at someone and say, "Bang, bang, you're dead," not much actually happens.

Molly Ivins

#14. I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point
race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.

Molly Ivins

#15. The Founders were right all along, but the results are a lot funnier than they intended.

Molly Ivins

#16. It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong.

Molly Ivins

#17. How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

Molly Ivins

#18. Oh, hell, I can't go on a spiritual journey - I'm constipated.

Molly Ivins

#19. Freedom fighters don't always win, but they're always right.

Molly Ivins

#20. Sit up, join up, get on line, get in touch, find out who's raising hell and join them. No use waiting on a bunch of wussy politicians.

Molly Ivins

#21. Anyone who thinks humans are not capable of so fouling their own nest that the land and the waters can no longer be productive just hasn't been paying attention.

Molly Ivins

#22. As I have pointed out time and again, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to send little kids to school than it is to let them grow up into young thugs who have to be sent to prison, not to mention the savings in the wear and tear on the nerves, property, and safety of the rest of the citizenry.

Molly Ivins

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

Molly Ivins

#24. What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit.

Molly Ivins

#25. So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds,
but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Be outrageous ... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!

Molly Ivins

#26. Sometimes I think Texas exists as a reality check for those who might wander too far toward the precious.

Molly Ivins

#27. 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.

Molly Ivins

#28. I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.

Molly Ivins

#29. Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.

Molly Ivins

#30. 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.

Molly Ivins

#31. It's hard to argue against cynics - they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.

Molly Ivins

#32. I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.

Molly Ivins

#33. My friend Mercedes Pena made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. "How do you Latinas do this all the time in touch with your emotions?" I asked her. "That's why we take siestas," she replied.

Molly Ivins

#34. If you really wanted to settle down the Middle East, if what you wanted was change in the Middle East, it is perfectly obvious that the first step is resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Molly Ivins

#35. 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.

Molly Ivins

#36. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

Molly Ivins

#37. Conservatives have been mad at the Supreme Court since it decided to desegregate the schools in 1954 and seen fit to blame the federal bench for everything that has happened since then that they don't like.

Molly Ivins

#38. In city rooms and in the bars where newspeople drink, you can find out what's going on. You can't find it in the papers.

Molly Ivins

#39. I'm sorry that government involves filling out a lot of forms ... I'm sorry myself that we're not still on the frontier, where we could all tote guns, shoot anything that moved and spit to our hearts' content. But we live in a diverse and crowded country, and with civilization comes regulation.

Molly Ivins

#40. Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman

Molly Ivins

#41. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#42. On a personal note: I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I intend to recover. I don't need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.

Molly Ivins

#43. No one has ever accused Texas of being in the vanguard of social progress. This is the most macho state in the U.S. of A. By lore, legend, and fact, Texas is 'hell' on women and horses.

Molly Ivins

#44. The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.

Molly Ivins

#45. I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.

Molly Ivins

#46. I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

Molly Ivins

#47. I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

Molly Ivins

#48. What you need is sustained outrage ... there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

Molly Ivins

#49. Americans are not getting screwed by the Republican Party. They're getting screwed by the large corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.

Molly Ivins

#50. It's hard to convince people that you're killing them for their own good.

Molly Ivins

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

Molly Ivins

#52. I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth.

Molly Ivins

#53. He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.

Molly Ivins

#54. Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.

Molly Ivins

#55. I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

Molly Ivins

#56. Mostly, Texas women are tough in some very fundamental ways. Not unfeminine, nor necessarily unladylike, just tough!

Molly Ivins

#57. Conservatives are fond of pointing out there are problems in this world can't be solved by throwing money at them. There are even more that can't be solved by dropping bombs on them.

Molly Ivins

#58. The more a body tries to explode all the foolish myths that have grown up about Texas by telling the truth, the more a body will wind up adding to the mythology.

Molly Ivins

#59. If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

Molly Ivins

#60. When Michael Jackson, a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich, white woman, married Elvis Presley's daughter the Scientologist. Makes you proud to be an American, dudn't it?

Molly Ivins

#61. The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

Molly Ivins

#62. I think most of us become nicer as we get older, less judgmental, less full of certitude; life tends to knock a few corners of us as we go through. Cancer, divorce, teenagers, and other plagues make us give up on expecting ourselves - or life - to be perfect, which is a real relief.

Molly Ivins

#63. As for George Bush of Kennebunkport, Maine- personally I think he's further evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky has an overdeveloped sense of irony.

Molly Ivins

#64. As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

Molly Ivins

#65. And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist - it's practically a congenital disorder with me.

Molly Ivins

#66. The advantage of being able to identify sin is that you can go out and do it, and enjoy it.

Molly Ivins

#67. 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.

Molly Ivins

#68. Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun,

Molly Ivins

#69. Texas is not a civilized place. Texans shoot one another a lot. They also knife, razor, and stomp one another to death with some frequency. And they fight in bars all the time.

Molly Ivins

#70. In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's] office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.

Molly Ivins

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

Molly Ivins

#72. Everyone knows [George W. Bush] has no clue, but no one there has the courage to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely adequate.

Molly Ivins

#73. During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: Look out! They're about to smack you around again!

Molly Ivins

#74. Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.

Molly Ivins

#75. 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?

Molly Ivins

#76. Texas liberals are the camels of good news. We can cross entire deserts between oases.

Molly Ivins

#77. Humanism is not alive and well in Texas. Different colors and types of Texans do not like one another, nor do they pretend to.

Molly Ivins

#78. I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.

Molly Ivins

#79. On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes.

Molly Ivins

#80. Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system or we lose the democracy.

Molly Ivins

#81. Nothing like a few restful weeks contemplating the decline of civilization to restore the humors. What I did on my summer vacation was listen to a lot of people talk about the decline of practically everything - you could call it the leisure of the theory class.

Molly Ivins

#82. Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.

Molly Ivins

#83. Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.

Molly Ivins

#84. Of course, it has never paid much.

Molly Ivins

#85. Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.

Molly Ivins

#86. Although a life-long fashion dropout, I have absorbed enough by reading Harper's Bazaar while waiting at the dentist's to have grasped that the purpose of fashion is to make A Statement. My own modest Statement, discerned by true cognoscenti, is, Woman Who Wears Clothes So She Won't Be Naked.

Molly Ivins

#87. Every two years, one of the most hotly contested elections in Texas is the poll taken among members of the capitol press corps to determine who are actually the ten stupidest members of the Legislature. Two years ago, there were thirty-seven official nominees and several write-ins.

Molly Ivins

#88. When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.

Molly Ivins

#89. In the first place, any group of folks willing to make asses of themselves in pursuit of a good time should be commended and encouraged: The spirit of human frolic needs all the help it can get.

Molly Ivins

#90. Texas is a fine place for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses.

Molly Ivins

#91. You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.

Molly Ivins

#92. I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

Molly Ivins

#93. Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory.

Molly Ivins

#94. Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.

Molly Ivins

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

Molly Ivins

#96. I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.

Molly Ivins

#97. Good thing we've still got politics in Texas - finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

Molly Ivins

#98. I learned two things growing up in Texas. 1: God loves you, and you're going to burn in hell forever. 2: Sex is the dirtiest and most dangerous thing you can possibly do, so save it for someone you love.

Molly Ivins

#99. What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

Molly Ivins

#100. There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

Molly Ivins