Molly Ivins

I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.

In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster.

There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

People like to help. They like to be able to do something for you. Let them.

Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.

If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.

I worked through cancer twice. I probably worked through it too much the last time. This time, I found myself saying, 'Well, I don't feel well. I think I'll take the day off.' I think I did that even a little bit more than I needed to.

When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.

The stakes they play for in politics are paper and money. The chips they play with are your life.

As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic shih tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.

The trouble with capitalism as a system is that only those who have or can get capital can make it work for them, and that leaves out damn near all of us.

Anyone who thinks humans are not capable of so fouling their own nest that the land and the waters can no longer be productive just hasn't been paying attention.

If you ever get to the place where injustice doesn't bother you, you're dead.

What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit.

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

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse.

What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.

One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't was a lot of time thinking about the people who build their pyramids, either.