Molly Ivins Quotes

The idols of one's adolescence tend to endure - you never forget how you worshipped them.

- Molly Ivins

It really is possible to disagree with someone's policies without hating them. Grown-ups can do that.

- Molly Ivins

If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.

- Molly Ivins

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.

- Molly Ivins

One seldom expects the country's president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter's assessment of Elvis Presley's appeal - 'energy, rebelliousness and good humor' - is remarkably close to the mark.

- Molly Ivins

I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were 'German dogs.' They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.

- Molly Ivins

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

Even for southerners, Arkansans are amazingly friendly and extend hospitality to all strangers with astonishing openness. You couldn't find a pretension in that state if you hunted from Jonesboro to El Dorado.

- Molly Ivins

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

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

In most legislatures, punctilious attention to correct usage is considered elitist. The word 'government,' for example, is normally pronounced 'gummint'; bureaucracy is 'bureaucacy'; fiscal comes out 'physical,' and one moves not to suspend the rules, but to 'suppend.'

- Molly Ivins

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

We need to reform the political system, or we'll lose the democracy. I don't think it's that hard. It doesn't take rocket science. We've done it before successfully at the presidential level and tried it several places at the state level.

- Molly Ivins

Should a girl like me, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Sen. Phil Gramm? Nah. But it's tempting.

- Molly Ivins

The uproar of the late '60s - the antiwar movement, black riots, angry women. It was a wonderful time.

- Molly Ivins

Right before the Bush inauguration, many women were greatly reassured when Laura said of Roe v. Wade on the 'Today' show, 'No, I don't think it should be overturned.' Three days later, her husband reimposed the 'global gag rule' on groups abroad that receive U.S. funding for family planning.

- Molly Ivins

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

A teenage foot that never tapped to 'Heartbreak Hotel' in the '50s probably belonged to a hopeless grind.

- Molly Ivins

From orphanages to space colonies, it was all shallow but endearingly enthusiastic futurism. Gingrich was the kind of person who read a book or two on something and would then be quite afire as to how this was going to fit into some shining future.

- Molly Ivins

There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

- Molly Ivins

Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.

- Molly Ivins

The Federal Reserve system obviously doesn't work anymore - they keep lowering the federal discount rate, and all that happens is that the banks are making a fortune, and the old folks' CDs are getting chewed up.

- Molly Ivins

The greatest moral leader of my lifetime was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose private life does not bear close examination.

- Molly Ivins

One thing I have learned from Johnny Faulk, Texas, and life, is that since you don't always win, you got to learn to enjoy just fightin' the good fight.

- Molly Ivins

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

- Molly Ivins

All my life, I've been sort of a professional optimist, full of good cheer about matters political and journalistic. I always thought I'd get older and become an unnaturally cheerful old fart. But it's not happening.

- Molly Ivins

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

Texas is still resistant to Howard Johnsons, interstate highways and some forms of phoniness. It is the place least likely to become a replica of everyplace else. It's authentically awful, comic, and weirdly charming, all at the same time.

- Molly Ivins

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

Am I the only person covering politics who ever noticed that Newt Gingrich is actually a nincompoop?

- Molly Ivins

Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.

- Molly Ivins

As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.

- Molly Ivins

The stakes they play for in politics are paper and money. The chips they play with are your life.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

I had sort of given up on conventional journalism. I found it far too restrictive.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

We liberals do sometimes forsake our vows of compassion for all mankind.

- Molly Ivins

When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.

- Molly Ivins

I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.

- Molly Ivins

In Congress, there are some who are unashamed to aspire to eloquence, even to scholarship, but the only state legislator I ever knew who would not join in the mispronounceciation of a word for the sake of camaraderie with her fellows was former State Senator and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

- Molly Ivins

Public campaign financing isn't perfect and can doubtlessly be improved upon as we go.

- Molly Ivins

All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun.

- Molly Ivins

Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't 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

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

Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

- Molly Ivins

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

I have always been a left-winger and an outsider. I loved being that. I was perfectly cheerful with that role. Then suddenly, you're one of the talking heads on 'Nightline,' and you think you must have sold out.

- Molly Ivins

I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.

- Molly Ivins

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

I am one of those people who are out of touch with their emotions. I tend to treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives - a long-distance call once or twice or year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay.

- Molly Ivins

Racists seem obsessed by the idea that illegal workers - the hardest-working, poorest people in America - are somehow getting away with something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing Texas model, and it works a treat.

- Molly Ivins

If Bush does make it to the White House, he and Laura should have Ken Starr over for dinner.

- Molly Ivins

Laura Bush, it seems, is used to cast a softer light on her husband, who then proceeds to reverse whatever she's just promised.

- Molly Ivins

Legislative language is governed by a law of etymology that is also the ancient code of the bureaucracy: It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be close enough for government work. If they understand what you mean, it doesn't matter what you say or how you say it.

- Molly Ivins

What we call politics now and what most political writers write about is the empathy and the bonding and the word choice and the horse rights, and it has nothing to do with what's really happening to people's lives.

- Molly Ivins

To mistake Midland for the volk heartland is the West Texas equivalent of assuming that Greenwich, Connecticut, is Levittown.

- Molly Ivins

Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

What I've been telling people is that the doctors are gaining on cancer very rapidly. It's almost become a chronic disease, like diabetes - something you can treat. It doesn't go away, and you're not well in the sense of being over it, but you go on and live your life.

- Molly Ivins

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.

- Molly Ivins

In all my fantasies, I always assumed I would get married and have six children along the way with the greatest of ease.

- Molly Ivins

Anyone who watched George W. and Karl Rove while the former was governor of Texas will recognize a familiar pattern. Like much of Bush's social policy - from faith-based social services to railing against gay marriage - women's issues are one of the bones they've decided they can throw to the Christian right.

- Molly Ivins

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

New York is just as provincial as anyone else.

- Molly Ivins

One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera is that we in Texas don't have to run around getting all hysterical about immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it up; when you don't, you shut it down. It works to our benefit - it always has.

- Molly Ivins

Those who imagine polygamy to be handy cover for promiscuity are apparently off the mark. If polygamists share one quality, it is that, polygamy aside, they are extraordinarily strait-laced.

- Molly Ivins

There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

- Molly Ivins

When I was first diagnosed, I went out, as a book person, and got some books on cancer and looked up my version of the disease. It said that I had about a 5 percent chance of survival. I said, 'Gosh, well, it's been a good run.' What I didn't realize is that in the two years since those books were published, things had shifted dramatically.

- Molly Ivins

The danger of the blogosphere is reading only those you agree with. While there are right-wing blogs that are entertaining freak shows, it's hard to find substantial journalism there.

- Molly Ivins

In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn't get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow - and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people.

- Molly Ivins

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

Laws were changed and regulations repealed until an Enron can set sail without responsibility, supervision, or accountability.

- Molly Ivins

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

One of the few things I like about Bill Clinton is that he has very good manners. If his momma were still alive, I would congratulate her.

- Molly Ivins

Preemptive war is what Israel did in '67 with Arab armies on its borders.

- Molly Ivins

The Internet goes doot-doot-doot - it goes sideways. There's nothing hierarchical about it. And the best thing about it is also the worst thing about it, which is there are no gatekeepers on the Internet. Consequently, there's a whole lot of bad information on the Internet. But I think that sorts itself out over time.

- Molly Ivins

One of the more urp-making habits of media mavens is presuming to speak for the American people, as in 'The American people won't stand for this!'

- Molly Ivins

I couldn't find any way to tell the truth in a regular newspaper.

- Molly Ivins

'The New York Times' is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.

- Molly Ivins

We should all laugh more at our elected officials - it's good for us and good for them.

- Molly Ivins

Rush Limbaugh's pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego - now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.

- Molly Ivins

'Get along, go along' is not an inspirational philosophy, and only God knows how much moral cowardice it has covered up over the years. Serve your time, collect your chits, and cash 'em in for your home state? No, I'd say we could ask for more than that from our senators.

- Molly Ivins

The reason I take Rush Limbaugh seriously is not because he's offensive or right-wing, but because he is one of the few people addressing a large group of disaffected people in this country. And despite his frequent denials, Limbaugh does indeed have a somewhat cult-like effect on his ditto heads.

- Molly Ivins

I wouldn't say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It's just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills.

- Molly Ivins

It is the stories we don't get, the ones we miss, pass over, fail to recognize, don't pick up on, that will send us to hell.

- Molly Ivins

For years, I have been trying to persuade people that George W. Bush, although no Einstein, is not stupid.

- Molly Ivins

Old-fashioned anti-immigrant prejudice always brings out some old-fashioned racists.

- Molly Ivins

I think one can easily make a case for taking out Saddam Hussein. In fact, one could probably be made on humanitarian grounds alone. But just as there's a downside risk to doing nothing about this man, there is a very serious downside risk to invading the country.

- Molly Ivins

In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster.

- Molly Ivins

Even after four years in office, George W. Bush's record on women doesn't leap out at you. It's composed almost entirely of little things, small enough to fly well under the media's radar screen, so few of us have any sense of their cumulative impact.

- Molly Ivins

I have known George W. Bush slightly since we were both in high school, and I studied him closely as governor. He is neither mean nor stupid. What we have here is a man shaped by three intertwining strands of Texas culture, combined with huge blinkers of class. The three Texas themes are religiosity, anti-intellectualism, and machismo.

- Molly Ivins

The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son - it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.

- Molly Ivins

The Kurds will not be allowed to have an independent country because Turkey wouldn't stand for it; they have their own Kurdish population.

- Molly Ivins

Jimmy Carter was unquestionably the most moral president of my lifetime, but he wasn't much of a president.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

I'd worked for the 'Dallas Times Herald' for ten years, and its death was a kick in the gut the like of which I cannot recall ever having experienced.

- Molly Ivins

I really do think we're going through a period of concentration of ownership of media, and we're starting to see the effects at the editorial level, and it's all bad. This increased pressure for profits every quarter, smaller news hole, less coverage of important stuff - the extent that it's become one giant infotainment industry.

- Molly Ivins

I want to point out, there are a lot of politicians who enjoy the political end of politics, but they're not interested in governance. And then, there are some that are really interested in governance and are just terrible at politics.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

The most unusual thing about Clinton as a pol is that he listens. Listens and remembers. If he does dance with them that brung him, not them that gave him big money, we will have a populist on our hands.

- Molly Ivins

If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

- Molly Ivins

I do object to those who jump from political hackery to flackery and expect respect.

- Molly Ivins

Sometimes misunderstandings between bloggers and the MSM are the result of simple ignorance.

- Molly Ivins

Conservatives, in general, are anti-immigrant for the same reasons they have always been anti-immigrant - a proud tradition in our nation of immigrants going back to the days of the Founders, when Ben Franklin thought we were going to be overrun by Germans. But Business likes illegal workers.

- Molly Ivins

Rove, of course, is an exceptionally good, exceptionally skillful campaign guy, and Bush himself is really gifted at the political end of politics. But he's always been, as he says, misunderestimated.

- Molly Ivins

Truth is, I've spent much of my life trying, unsuccessfully, to explode the myths about Texas.

- Molly Ivins

How come trying to explode myths about Texas always winds up reinforcing them?

- Molly Ivins

It's one thing to recognize that the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing like a cancer; it's another thing to come up with useful solutions.

- Molly Ivins

Raise hell - big time. I want y'all to get out there and raise hell about damned near everything. My word, there's a world out there that needs fixing. Get out there and get after it.

- Molly Ivins

The trouble with capitalism as a system is that only those who have or can get capital can make it work for them, and that leaves out damn near all of us.

- Molly Ivins

I intensely covered Bush when he was Governor of Texas.

- Molly Ivins

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter - nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.

- Molly Ivins

Here's the deal on Texas. It's big. So big, there's about five distinct and different places here, separated from one another geologically, topographically, botanically, ethnically, culturally, and climatically.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

People in Midland are real nice folks: I can't prove that with statistics, but I know West Texas, and it's just a fact.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

The extent to which not just state legislatures but the Congress of the United States are now run by large corporate special interests is beyond mere recognition as fact. The takeover is complete.

- Molly Ivins

One of the things I said was that I had been in great hopes that I would become a better person as a result of confronting my own mortality, but it actually never happened. I didn't become a better person.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

- Molly Ivins

The only reason to have a positive mental attitude is that it makes life better. It doesn't cure cancer.

- Molly Ivins

I'm sorry to say cancer can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person.

- Molly Ivins

I worked through cancer twice. I probably worked through it too much the last time. This time, I found myself saying, 'Well, I don't feel well. I think I'll take the day off.' I think I did that even a little bit more than I needed to.

- Molly Ivins

People asked me during the Iraq war if I was afraid to speak out. I said no.

- Molly Ivins

Arkansas, the state Bill Clinton loves and that loves him back, is a place with just no pretension at all.

- Molly Ivins

There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.

- Molly Ivins

I saw a shrink because I thought I suffered from fear of success.

- Molly Ivins

I'm happy to be called a liberal.

- Molly Ivins

There was really quite a remarkable level of sexism on newspapers when I started.

- Molly Ivins

I don't think I've decided much in my life. Don't you think life just happens?

- Molly Ivins

I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits.

- Molly Ivins

There is never anyone quite so wonderful as the people who were seniors when you were a freshman.

- Molly Ivins

I've always had trouble with male authority figures because my father was such a martinet.

- Molly Ivins

I really think the single most important thing to remember about trying to fix the schools is that there is no such thing as an instant result.

- Molly Ivins

Those who think of freedom in this country as one long, broad path leading ever onward and upward are dead damned wrong.

- Molly Ivins

Losing a part of a breast or all of one or both has, obviously, serious psychological consequences.

- Molly Ivins

Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel.

- Molly Ivins

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

I spend most of my life feeling like I've been shot out of a cannon.

- Molly Ivins

I only aim at the powerful.

- Molly Ivins

I spent my girlhood as a Clydesdale among thoroughbreds.

- Molly Ivins

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

- Molly Ivins

Don't get me started about the media double standard.

- Molly Ivins

I left the 'Trib' in 1970 with the feeling that I would never have a career in establishment media of any kind.

- Molly Ivins