Top 40 Ann Richards Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The here and now is all we have, and if we play it right it’s all we’ll need.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

3. “I’ve been tested by fire, and the fire lost.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

5. “A road to a friend’s house is never long.”

— Ann Richards

6. “You can put lipstick and earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it’s still a pig.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

9. “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.”

— Ann Richards

10. “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.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

12. “I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

15. “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.”

— Ann Richards

16. “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

17. “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.”

— Ann Richards

18. “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.”

— Ann Richards

19. “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.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

22. “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.”

— Ann Richards

23. “Oh, I would probably have raised more hell.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

26. “I get a lot of cracks about my hair, mostly from men who don’t have any.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

28. “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.”

— Ann Richards

29. “July does not a November election make.”

— Ann Richards

30. “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.”

— Ann Richards

31. “I have an awfully good life.”

— Ann Richards

32. “If you can’t fill the till, then don’t pass the bill.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

37. “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.”

— Ann Richards

38. “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.”

— Ann Richards

39. “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.”

— Ann Richards

40. “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.”

— Ann Richards

41. “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.”

— Ann Richards

42. “People don’t know that New York really is just made up of a group of very small neighborhoods.”

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards

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

— Ann Richards