Helen Thomas Quotations

Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.

You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.

When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.

I don't think there are any rude questions.

We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.

I think I'll work all my life. When you're having fun, why stop having fun?

But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.

The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is another liar... I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if he does.

I can remember the morning after President Nixon won re-election in 1972. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called a Cabinet meeting and told the members: 'You are all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes;' and asked for their resignations.

In Plains, I saw Jimmy Carter as he really is - a nice, decent man... in terms of compassionate contribution to society, he certainly has proven to be our best past president.

As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.

I love my work, and I think that I was so lucky to pick a profession where it's a joy to go to work every day.

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants...The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.

It's time for women to make their voices heard. Their silence on the subject of war and peace is deafening.

I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter. Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch.

Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.

Presidential power was overruled by the high bench in July 1974, when President Nixon was ordered to turn over some audio tapes of his White House conversations, including the 'smoking gun' tape of June 23, 1972, that revealing the Watergate cover up.

If we care about the children, the grandchildren, the future generations, we need to make sure that they do not become the cannon fodder of the future.

I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.

There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.

Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.

President Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights, and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.

It's like I say to young people who ask me about going into journalism: If you want to be loved, don't go into this business.

We in the press have a special role since there is no other institution in our society that can hold the President accountable. I do believe that our democracy can endure and prevail only if the American people are informed.

The United States has tried for years to live down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order during World War II to move Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to inland detention camps on grounds that they might be disloyal.

All of us who covered the Reagans agreed that President Reagan was personable and charming, but I'm not so certain he was nice. It's hard for me to think of anyone as 'nice' when I hear him say 'The homeless are homeless because they want to be homeless.'

I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.

I think Obama is handling his image very well, but I think he lacks boldness.

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.

You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.

This is the worst President ever. He George W. Bush is the worst President in all of American history.

I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.

I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, and I will be a liberal 'til the day I die.

I'm covering the worst president in American history.

I've never covered the president in any way other than that he is ultimately responsible.

Presidents hate the press. They hate me most of the time.

We won't really know what will happen until it happens.

I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.

The presidency awed me, but presidents do not. Perhaps I have always expected too much of them, but I believe that when they reach the highest office in the land, they should live up to the greatest honor that can come to a person in American political life. Some have stood the test better than others.

We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel. You can't open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but if you say one thing about Israel, and you're off limits.

People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.

Clinton is the first female to be taken seriously for the highest office in the land. She has the credentials, the stamina and she is a good campaigner. Her detractors in both parties like to say she can't win, but they may be proven wrong.

Great presidents take stands, and they fight off these people who really are so far to the right. I don't want to call them names, even though they would call me names.

Maybe the Jefferson case will give members of Congress second thoughts the next time they get ready to legislate away the rights of ordinary Americans.

Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists.

To my mind, a president should care about all people, and he didn't, which is why I will always feel Reagan lacked soul.

All presidents rail against the press. It goes with the turf.

I have a background and an understanding of what's happened in the Middle East that a lot of people don't have, because there's been no interest.

I'm decrepit but I don't want to give up, and I love my work.

We are the only institution in our society that can question a president on a regular basis and make him accountable. Otherwise, he could be king.

We began to see the renovation of our offices as a subtle part of the Nixon war against the press.

We got the vote, which we should've been born with, in 1920. Everything we've had to struggle for it's ridiculous.

The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.

I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press.

I got into the Kennedy White House because at the time I was president of the Women's National Press Club, and they assigned me to cover the early days of the Kennedy campaign. Jackie especially. Everyone was interested in the family.

I had a lot of fun bantering back and forth with Kennedy. But for ease and comfort, it would be Gerald Ford. He was a down-home type. I came from the Midwest and he came from the Midwest. He was nonaggressive and kindly.

I think that presidents deserve to be questioned. Maybe irreverently, most of the time. Bring 'em down a size. You see a president, ask a question. You have one chance in the barrel. Don't blow it.

I was in Independence, Missouri when Johnson signed the Medicare bill, with Truman standing there. Truman had first proposed Medicare, but couldn't get it through.

The sudden ending of a White House career all seems so unceremonious for aides who have personally sacrificed a lot - and sometimes even bent their conscience - to do the president's bidding.

When you speak of the press, of course, you have to speak of different segments of the press. Reporters, straight reporters, wire services, you stick to the facts; you don't create the story, per se. You cover what is happening.

United Press International is a great news agency. It has made a remarkable mark in the annals of American journalism and has left a superb legacy for future journalists. I wish the new owners all the best, great stories and happy landings.

I suppose that's democracy really. But everybody with a laptop thinks they're a journalist these days. That's a problem.

I've never seen an administration that was more secretive.

They've heard all kinds of horror stories about what can happen in jail and how they'll be locked up and someone will throw away the key.

Every President hates the Press.

I'm of Arab background.

You're only as good as your last story.

Life is too short to drink the house wine.

American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic.

If you want to be President, decide it at the age of five, and then live accordingly.

You didn't tell a lie, you just left a big hole in the truth.

Anybody who runs for public office today has got to know his life or her life will be an open book. I've decided that if you want to run for public office you have to decide at the age of 5 and live accordingly.

You cannot have a democracy without an informed people.

I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history

If we lose our title of "land of the free," what have we got?

Don't let the politicians chip away at the New Deal and the Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare, that puts a floor beyond which the elderly, the sick, the powerless do not starve or lack for medicine or shelter.

I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you're dead, you're dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don't go to hell.

Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.

The presidential news conference is indispensable because it is the only forum in our society where you can be questioned on a regular basis and held accountable.

We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.

Get the hell out of Palestine.

I'll tell you how I handle stress. I say-This too shall pass. You've got to try to stay cool and admit when you're wrong, and tell them when you're right.

I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, I'll be one till I die. What else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies.

We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is...We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.

Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.

I'm not anti-Jewish; I'm anti-Zionist.