Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Ann Richards

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I've had lots of good advice.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I have an awfully good life.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, I would probably have raised more hell.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Life isn't fair, but government must be.

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'd have to sacrifice, and that 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 did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.'

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

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

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.

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.