Quotes from Meg Greenfield

In government and out, there are vast realms of the bureaucracy dedicated to seeking more information, in perpetuity if need be, in order to avoid taking action.

If you were starting from scratch to invent an instrument that could impose fiscal discipline, the last one on earth you would come up with is the United States government.

In Washington it is an honor to be disgraced. you have to have been somebody to fall.

Washington, under Democrats and Republicans, has a profoundly neurotic attitude toward 'the people.' It is built on equal parts of suspicion, loathing, fear, respect and dependence.

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.

Talking too much, too soon, and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.

Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage?

Everyone seems to be running against a liar, but nobody seems to be one. Odd - I mean, the math doesn't work out.

Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

We are professionally admonished to freeze many of our ordinary human instincts, to distance ourselves from too much personal knowledge of or contact with the people we write about, lest we endanger our objectivity or adulterate our product with an excess of understanding of their behavior or, God forbid, sympathy.

She was clearly an intellectual, but a far from purely academic one.

What I mean is how public people almost eagerly dehumanize themselves. They allow the markings of region, family, class, individual character, and, generally, personhood that they once possessed to be leached away. At the same time, they construct a new public self that often does terrible damage to what remains of the genuine person.

Each spring we go to big banquets, press and politicians all done up in formal dress, where everyone applauds the awarding of prizes to journalists who have exposed the crumminess of the political leaders sitting at the head table, joining in the ovation and fun. Lots of jokes are made. Lots of hands are shaken. It is a community affair.