Quotes from 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.

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

All right, all right, so I love Lubbock. I never claimed to have exquisite taste. I'll be there with the diehards to the end, trying to explain, "No, this is a griddle with some Monopoly houses on it: this is Lubbock." Still, the life of all us Lubbock-lovers would be a lot easier if the Chamber of Commerce hadn't adopted the slogan "Keep Lubbock Beautiful." Keep?

That's the trouble with this country, people keep messin' up each other's movies.

I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, reflecting on Bush's "stay-the-course" strategy, said, "If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want the drillin' rights on that man's head.

The soul of Dallas is located at the Tomb of the Unknown Shopper, a monument that has not yet been built, but it will be as soon as Dallas acquires a municipal sense of humor.

Carl Parker observes, if you took all the fools out of the Lege, it wouldn't be