Ann Richards Quotations

Well, you know my number one cause has always been that women's reproductive health needs to be protected.

We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day.

Teaching was the hardest work I had ever done, and it remains the hardest work I have done to date.

We're living in a whole new social and economic order with a whole new set of problems and challenges. Old assumptions and old programs don't work in this new society and the more we try to stretch them to make them fit, the more we will be seen as running away from what is reality.

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.

I had such high expectations of myself. I was going to be the best mother, the best housewife, the best entertainer, the best nurse, you know - what it was, I was going to be the best. And I could never live up to my expectations.

I just feel like I'm a very lucky person to have a new life outside of politics.

I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.

Let me tell you, sisters, seeing dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything I've had to deal with in politics.

I believe in recovery, and I believe that as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it.

I think you have to deal with grief in the sense that you have to recognize that you have it, and say that it's OK to have all the sadness.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.

I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could. I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.

I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.

I like candidates who tell me something that is going to make a difference to me.

Well it's really hard to satisfy the right wing. I can tell you that.

I thought I knew Texas pretty well, but I had no notion of its size until I campaigned it.

People work for a living. They got families to raise. Their lives are tough.

Osteoporosis is a disease that attacks the bones in your body. It happens to really almost everyone when they get really old. But for women, after menopause, they can lose up to 30 percent of their bone mass.

I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.

Sometimes when I'm watching television and something, an image, will come on that has to do with 9/11 or some of these families telling their stories, or children talking about drawing pictures of airplanes flying into towers, you know, I find myself still choking up.

People don't know that New York really is just made up of a group of very small neighborhoods.

Jesse Jackson is a leader and a teacher who can open our hearts and open our minds and stir our very souls.

Weight-bearing exercise builds bone density, builds your muscular strength so that you can hold your body up where those bones have a tendency to get weak.

I don't think people maybe think that the government does tell them the truth. I think they expect politicians who are going to tell them one thing and then when they get in office do something else.

Everything that we used to think got taught at home now seemingly has to be taught in the public school system, and something is going to get lost in the process.

Well, let me tell you, any conservative that's unhappy with George Bush warms my heart, in any way that they can wake up and smell the coffee would be really great.

I travel all over the country making speeches for people I believe in.

There is not a doubt in my mind that the people of America are hunkered down. They are afraid.

I work very hard on my health, and I think about it, of course, like I've never thought before.

Well, you know, too much democracy is a sort of sad thing.

She's always going to take on whatever is the toughest challenge.

I think in the immediate days after 9/11, the administration acted very, very well. I liked the decisiveness of it.

I was really pleased ... we were all really nervous going into this debate and I thought that John Kerry knocked it out of the ballpark,

Most people assume that physician language is akin to technical, non-understandable jargon. It does not have to be that way. Doctors do not perform witchcraft. They simply interpret what they are told and what tests reveal. They diagnose and prescribe treatment. Our responsibility is to help doctors know what is going on in our bodies and to insist on clear, precise, understandable language in response.

Doctors are our partners, and they need all the assistance we can give them to be sure we get the right diagnosis.

Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

Oh, I would probably have raised more hell.

I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

There is a lot more to this life than just the struggle to make money.

One of the truths of our time is the hunger deep in people are over the planet for coming into relationship with each other.

You bet being funny helps accomplish things. I've always maintained that people don't realize how many brain cells it takes to be funny. And politics ought to be fun -- after baseball it's our next favorite national pastime.

The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense.

I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.

[Our understanding is] not intellectual, but instinctive.

I'm against an income tax because all the rich people hire lawyers and accountants to be sure that they don't pay income tax.

I have an awfully good life.

We saw farms go on the auction block while we bought food from foreign countries. Well, that's wrong.

We have forgotten to be our brothers and sisters keepers. And we have forgotten that the Number 1 goal is to love one another.

July does not a November election make.

If you can't fill the till, then don't pass the bill.

Young women should begin to build bone mass early in their lives. The more mass there is, the less they will lose in later life. They should enjoy a diet of calcium-rich foods and avoid food and drink that causes bone loss.

There is a special mystique to Texas. Texans represent many things to the uninitiated: We are bigger than life in our boots and Stetsons, rugged individualists whose two-steppin' has achieved world-wide acclaim, and we were the first to define hospitality.

Cherish your friends and family as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Life isn't fair, but government must be,

Learn to enjoy your own company. You are the one person you can count on living with for the rest of your life.

The here and now is all we have, and if we play it right it's all we'll need.

A road to a friend's house is never long.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned...is that we all have to learn from our mistakes, and we learn from those mistakes a lot more than we learn from the things we succeeded in doing.

If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities.

They blame the low income women for ruining the country because they are staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children.

I'm really glad that our young people missed the Depression, and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that I knew. Leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we would have to sacrifice, and these difficulties might last awhile. They didn't tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

I've always told my children that life is like a layer cake. You get to put one layer on top of the other, and whether you frost it or not is up to you.

Power is what calls the shots, and power is a white male game.

I've been tested by fire, and the fire lost.

You can put lipstick and earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig.

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.

I get a lot of cracks about my hair, mostly from men who don't have any.

Ann Richards on How to Be a Good Republican: 1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault. 2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own. 3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.