Molly Ivins Quotes

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

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.

Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.

I used to go on college campuses 25 years ago and announce I was a feminist, and people thought it meant I believed in free love and was available for a quick hop in the sack. ... Now I go on college campuses and say I'm a feminist, and half of them think it means I'm a lesbian. How'd we get from there to here without passing "Go"?

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.

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

It is quite reasonable to subscribe both to the old saw that no good girl was ever ruined by a book and to the perception that it is not good for children to be constantly exposed to the sexual violence in our popular culture. Protecting children seems to me logically, legally, and rather easily differentiated from censorship.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The impulse to make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free is an old one ... When we are badly frightened, we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing some of our liberties. We did it during the McCarthy era out of fear of communism. Less liberty is regularly proposed as a solution to crime, to pornography, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to all kinds of threats.

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

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.

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

The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us. ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid. ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The government can now delve into personal and private records of individuals even if they cannot be directly connected to a terrorist or foreign government. Bank records, e-mails, library records, even the track of discount cards at grocery stores can be obtained on individuals without establishing any connection to a terrorist before a judge. According to the Los Angeles Times, Al Qaeda uses sophisticated encryption devices freely available on the Internet that cannot be cracked. So the terrorists are safe from cyber-snooping, but we're not.

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.

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

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.

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