Jeff Greenfield Quotes

38 quotes in 934 categories

• The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.
• Describing the jury in the OJ Simpson murder trial: These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.
• Victory has 1,000 fathers; defeat has 1,000 kibitzers.
• There is no such thing as political science, but there are tenancies so strong that they might as well be called laws of nature.
• In politics, Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck. Daffy's always going berserk, jumping up and down, yelling. Bugs's got that sly smile, like he always…
• A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on…
• Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.
• Television is one of the most fickle businesses that there are, you are in favour one minute and out the next.
• If the court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, is that a 'liberal' result enabling gay couples married in states where gay marriage is…
• History doesn't turn on a dime; it turns on a plugged nickel.
• I got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math.
• In another life, before taking the veil of journalistic purity, I practiced the black arts of a political operative, including 'debate prep.
• Protestations of indifference to higher office are hard to take seriously when the 'non-candidate' is busily engaged in testing the waters.
• Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .
• After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case…
• As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket.…
• As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think…
• By every measure, John Kennedy's sex life was compulsive and reckless. At one level, it had clear public consequences. Knowledge of Kennedy's behavior gave FBI…
• Conservatives may worship Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' but for Obama, the helping hand comes in large measure from the public, not the private sector. To…
• F.D.R. had to deal with Southern segregationists - and outright racists - who held power in Congress, so he had to yield to that power…

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