Top 100 Ivins Quotes
#1. First I laughed my way through Elinor Lipman's book of political tweets. Then I put my ear to the ground and listened to Molly Ivins guffawing from the grave. Lipman is a piquant poetic rock star!
Wally Lamb
#2. Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.
John Scalzi
#3. Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation notably lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice.
Molly Ivins
#4. I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.
Molly Ivins
#5. And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist - it's practically a congenital disorder with me.
Molly Ivins
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. If you ever get to the place where injustice doesn't bother you, you're dead.
Molly Ivins
#9. 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
#10. The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
Molly Ivins
#11. California is now close to spending more on prisons than it does on higher education - surely the death warrant of a civilization.
Molly Ivins
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. Mostly, Texas women are tough in some very fundamental ways. Not unfeminine, nor necessarily unladylike, just tough!
Molly Ivins
#17. 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
#18. Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.
Molly Ivins
#19. He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
Molly Ivins
#20. I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth.
Molly Ivins
#21. I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.
Molly Ivins
#22. It's hard to convince people that you're killing them for their own good.
Molly Ivins
#23. 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
#24. What you need is sustained outrage ... there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.
Molly Ivins
#25. I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.
Molly Ivins
#26. I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.
Molly Ivins
#27. Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.
Molly Ivins
#28. Texas liberals are the camels of good news. We can cross entire deserts between oases.
Molly Ivins
#30. Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.
Molly Ivins
#31. Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.
Molly Ivins
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. We've had trickle down economics in the country for ten years now, and most of us aren't even damp yet.
Molly Ivins
#35. Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system or we lose the democracy.
Molly Ivins
#36. 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
#37. Bad policies, stupid policies, gutless policies have real consequences.
Molly Ivins
#38. I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.
Molly Ivins
#39. 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
#40. The advantage of being able to identify sin is that you can go out and do it, and enjoy it.
Molly Ivins
#41. Listen to the people who are talking about how to fix what's wrong, not the ones who just work people into a snit over the problems. Listen to the people who have ideas about how to fix things, not the ones who just blame others.
Molly Ivins
#42. 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
#43. Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.
Molly Ivins
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed,
Molly Ivins
#50. Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun,
Molly Ivins
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. If you fail to gain absolute self-control, you have failed in the greatest victory of life.
Antoine R. Ivins
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. Freedom fighters don't always win, but they're always right.
Molly Ivins
#57. Oh, hell, I can't go on a spiritual journey - I'm constipated.
Molly Ivins
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. The Founders were right all along, but the results are a lot funnier than they intended.
Molly Ivins
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. The word of the Lord never comes to us as an opinion, no attempt is made to support it by argument, it comes as a definite, abstract statement of fact. So it is from the first words ... to the last, the works of the Father are declared as facts, not theories.
Anthony W. Ivins
#65. 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
#66. With politicians, artful evasion is always preferable to the outright lie.
Molly Ivins
#67. 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
#68. Behind a smoke screen of high-profile female appointees and soothing slogans, George W. Bush is waging war on women.
Molly Ivins
#69. 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
#70. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
Molly Ivins
#71. 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
#72. The first rule of holes: When you're in one stop digging.
Molly Ivins
#73. By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for 'dialogue' with any gentile.
Bruce Edwards Ivins
#74. You could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.
Molly Ivins
#75. Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.
Molly Ivins
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman
Molly Ivins
#83. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world.
Molly Ivins
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
Molly Ivins
#88. 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
#89. If his IQ slips any lower, we'll have to water him twice a day
Molly Ivins
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. It's hard to argue against cynics - they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
Molly Ivins
#93. 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
#94. Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.
Molly Ivins
#95. I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.
Molly Ivins
#96. 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
#97. Sometimes I think Texas exists as a reality check for those who might wander too far toward the precious.
Molly Ivins
#98. 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
#99. What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit.
Molly Ivins
#100. Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.
Molly Ivins
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