“People often refer to Dubai as the Hong Kong of the Gulf, but it’s really more like Vegas.”
“Some white people are privileged, some aren’t. Some black people are, some aren’t. It’s strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it’s making a generalization – a negative one – based on skin color.”
“Speaking fluent English – like doing long division or successfully rewiring a 220-volt electrical outlet – is not a skill you’re born with. It’s something you learn, occasionally even by opening some old dictionary.”
“You can look different but have the same values. That’s not diversity; it’s conformity.”
“The Clinton era is over. I think that there would even have been a certain amount of rejoicing among some Republicans if Gore had won or if Ralph Nader had won or if Satan had won.”
“I do think – I’m sure I’m the lone voice in saying this – that Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they’re lunatics. I think they’re evil.”
“Most of the time, you can beat a woman in an argument.”
“The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid – I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is.”
“I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn’t be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year’s resolution is not to bark back.”
“Trump is, in part, a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.”
“I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter’s kindergarten class.”
“Boys and girls are not the same.”
“To politicize a man’s tragic death is about as low as you can go, isn’t it?”
“Like everyone else, rich people respond to incentives.”
“The one thing I’m convinced George W. Bush is good at is bipartisanship. It’s clearly something he enjoys personally.”
“When it comes to scaring the bourgeoisie into showing up at the polls, nothing works better than negative advertising.”
“You don’t criticize your employer.”
“The unhappy truth is, learning is hard.”
“The average Liberian, it turns out, does not share the same assumptions as the average black Methodist minister from Chicago.”
“Carrying an automatic weapon in a Third World country beyond the easy reach of higher authority? The job description is like a bug light to borderline personalities.”
“Get-educated-quick schemes are usually about as sound as subprime mortgage-backed securities: Enticing but basically fraudulent.”
“Children with Down Syndrome are not monsters, but uncommonly gentle human beings who can and do lead full lives.”
“The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was sure about.”
“I only want to debate people who are more powerful than I am.”
“You can’t fix a problem if you don’t have the words to describe it. You can’t even think about it clearly.”
“There’s almost nothing that upsets Americans more than the idea that somewhere, somehow, somebody is getting his feelings hurt.”
“In politics, reform never comes before crisis.”
“People like entitlements. That’s why we spend so much on them.”
“The public understands that the government is broke, but many still don’t want to cut programs they enjoy or depend on.”
“It’s easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers ‘A Love Supreme,’ whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture.”
“I feel like I’ve known Hunter S. Thompson for most of my life. I first encountered him in 1981, when I was 12.”
“What bothers me is the lack of self-awareness. I don’t know if I have ever met a group less self-aware than political reporters.”
“It’s normal for people, especially politicians, to expect rewards in return for favors.”
“One area of liberal phenomenon I support is female bi-sexuality.”
“I am not insecure about being a journalist.”
“As a print journalist, you can be frustrated by people who don’t call you back, parts of the story you can’t get. TV gets you access to everyone because people call you back. It also allows you to satisfy your curiosity. I am a very curious person.”
“It is nice to be around people who think differently than you. They challenge your ideas and keep you from being complacent.”
“Living in Washington, you can’t take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don’t believe because they get paid to.”
“I try to tell the truth.”
“Billy Tauzin is one of the most interesting people in Washington. He is smart, funny, and interesting.”
“It is increasingly important to be open-minded.”
“I am really only interested in new information, not freelance opinion. I don’t really care what you think off the top of your head.”
“Unless you know a lot more about something than I do, I am not really that interested. I have too much information already.”
“I have never been one to look beyond today.”
“Who laughs less than feminists?”
“To be a feminist, you could cut your hair really short. You have to be really angry about something.”
“If it was up to the U.N., Saddam Hussein would still be killing his own people.”
“I think Michael Moore is loathsome, though, not because he dislikes Bush, but because he seems to dislike America.”
“American officials have bent over backwards to show how sensitive they are to Muslim culture. It didn’t seem very effective. They seem to be worried about winning the respect of other people.”
“It’s hard to be ambitious if you’re content, isn’t it?”
“I can’t wait to work for Rick Kaplan. He’s a great producer. I would host an infomercial if he would produce it.”
“In the absence of evidence, superstition. It’s a Middle Ages thing. That’s my theory anyway.”
“There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.”
“Canadians are so easily wounded.”
“Studies have shown people listen to TV than watch it.”
“I don’t care what anybody thinks.”
“Pat Buchanan likes to fight. But only on TV.”
“You can learn a lot about Pat Buchanan by talking to his campaign staff, particularly the ones who have quit or been fired.”
“Pat Buchanan has written and said a number of things that are widely understood to be hostile to Jews and to Israel.”
“You want people with different life experiences as a backstop against bad decision.”
“I’m so pathetically eager for people to love D.C. It’s so sad. It’s like I work for the chamber of commerce or something.”
“Intelligence is not a moral category.”
“I’m not much of an economic conservative, and I’m not conservative at all on foreign policy.”
“I like bow ties, and I certainly spent a lot of time defending them.”
“Under no circumstances am I going to criticize my family in public.”
“I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances.”
“Animals shouldn’t be mistreated.”
“Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully.”
“American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump.”
“I have no time for political hacks who say things they don’t believe because they get paid to.”
“People say you become more cynical as you get older. That hasn’t been my experience.”
“Maybe I’m flattering myself, but I think my view of humanity has got steadily sunnier since I was 15. I have a higher opinion of politicians, for instance, than I did when I first moved to Washington.”
“My first experience on public radio still ranks among the most embarrassing episodes of my relatively short life.”
“People who listen to NPR are forever thanking the hosts for ‘sharing,’ or ‘initiating a dialogue,’ or ‘taking the time to explain this very important issue.’”
“All that chatter you hear from yuppie parents at the playground about how expensive it is to ‘do’ bathrooms? It’s all true. Every word, and worse.”
“I’d been in journalism about two weeks when I realized I would do just about anything to avoid writing, and over the years, I have.”
“I like women.”
“People tend to cherish and take care of the things they pay for and therefore own, countries included. The opposite is also true. When was the last time you changed the oil in a rental car?”
“There will always be some who, for whatever reason, find themselves dependent on the charity of others. But when half the population is along for the ride, the system becomes dangerously out of balance. Things fall apart.”
“The tax code is becoming steadily more progressive, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands power politics. It’s always easier to force sacrifice on an unpopular minority than it is to ask the majority to pony up.”
“Limbaugh hosts a radio show. His job is to shock people.”
“Nobody wants to be seen with a bigot.”
“I’d rather have dinner with Don King than with Mark Furhman. But then, I’m American. I have no perspective.”
“He’ll likely be remembered as a political figure, but I don’t recall Andrew Breitbart ever mentioning electoral politics. It bored him.”
“There’s no law of nature that says America must remain the most powerful country in the world.”
“Senator McConnell is by all accounts a decent person. He’s pretty conservative, too.”
“Although virtually all Republicans campaign on fiscal restraint, how many actually care about it deeply?”
“If you want another world war, run up unsustainable debts.”
“America is secure because we can afford the strongest military in history. Once the U.S. economy is no longer dominant, we are no longer safe, and the world becomes chaotic.”
“I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt.”
“Almost nobody gets rich or erudite overnight.”
“Sharpton is a smart guy. In some ways, he’s a good guy. But a moral arbiter? Let’s not get carried away.”
“I’m not uncomfortable around guns – I’ve hunted for most of my life – but bringing them on stories is considered taboo.”
“Journalists typically don’t carry weapons, even in war zones, for fear of compromising their status as neutral observers. If you’re armed, the theory goes, other armed people will consider you a target.”
“Apart from its dangers, much of Iraq isn’t very interesting to look at. The landscape is flat and dun colored. The dirt just beyond the highway is littered with hunks of twisted and mangled metal, some of it the detritus of wars, some of it just unclaimed junk. The countryside looks muddy and broken.”
“In the Nation of Islam, Akbar Muhammad is a big deal.”
“As a rule, the civil-rights establishment is not punctual.”
“Seldom has a politician left public office with more self-generated fanfare than Sen. William S. Cohen.”
“Children born with Down Syndrome are not vegetables, nor are their lives demonstrably not worth living.”
“It is one of the triumphs of modern society that the life of the average person with Down Syndrome has become strikingly normal.”
“The rapid growth of prenatal testing has had some undeniably positive effects: A woman who knows she will bear a child with a handicap can plan to deliver in a hospital equipped for risky births. And many couples prefer the opportunity to prepare psychologically for the work of raising a disabled child.”
“By the time I got to college, mind expansion had lost its appeal.”
“Certain Arabs love Dubai because it’s not at all like where they live. Certain others hate it for the same reason. When you hear an Osama bin Laden sympathizer rant about the decadence and hypocrisy of the Arab ruling class, you can be certain he’s picturing a nightclub in Dubai.”
“No agency is more acutely aware of how potentially damning and politically sensitive background investigations can be than the FBI; it conducts those investigations, after all.”
“I watched Bill O’Reilly for years.”
“In Washington, no one believes anything unless it comes from ‘The New Yorker,’ ‘New York Times’ editorial page, or ‘The Washington Post.’”
“If you think your average Trump voter in Ohio hates Washington, you should see what Washington thinks about the Trump voter in Ohio.”
“You need, in order to run a country as diverse as ours, a prominently recognized news source.”
“All standards are double standards.”
“The second you feel a political imperative, it destroys your art.”
“I like Sarah Palin.”
“People with conservative temperaments don’t become fighter pilots or presidential candidates – they’re all that way to some extent.”
“In addition to all the good things it’s done, the Internet has empowered an awful lot of people who would have been best off disempowered, including quite a few bloggers on both sides.”
“There actually have never been many shows as equally balanced as ‘Crossfire.’”
“There’s nothing scarier than a reckless prosecutor.”
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