Top 50 Dee Dee Myers Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Women have a lot of power in private life. There are many men who would say, ‘Hey, women already rule my life.’ But with women, more is more. The more there are, the more the world gets used to seeing them. We change the culture. We begin to expand options and lead and manage.”

— Dee Dee Myers

2. “1992 became known as the ‘Year of the Woman’ because so many of us were elected to public office that November, including a record six to the United States Senate.”

— Dee Dee Myers

3. “If people believe you’re on their side, they will trust your decisions.”

— Dee Dee Myers

4. “Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.”

— Dee Dee Myers

5. “As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education – and less on alcohol and cigarettes.”

— Dee Dee Myers

6. “I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.”

— Dee Dee Myers

7. “Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.”

— Dee Dee Myers

8. “I’m a baseball freak.”

— Dee Dee Myers

9. “There’s no question almost press secretaries talk about the sense of serving two masters. On the one hand you want to protect the president’s interests, and you represent his interests to the press. And the press is a proxy for the American people.”

— Dee Dee Myers

10. “The dirty little secret is that the pool man, who’s making $30,000 a year, is subsidizing the million-dollar mortgage for the family whose pool he cleans. No wonder people want to get rid of tax breaks for corporate jets.”

— Dee Dee Myers

11. “Study after study confirms that even when you control for variables like profession, education, hours worked, age, marital status, and children, men still are compensated substantially more – even in professions, like nursing, dominated by women. No wonder there’s a gender gap.”

— Dee Dee Myers

12. “It isn’t fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she’s taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.”

— Dee Dee Myers

13. “That’s not to say that women’s priorities are better than men’s. Rather, when women are empowered, when they can speak from the experience of their own lives, they often address different, previously neglected issues. And families and whole communities benefit.”

— Dee Dee Myers

14. “This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.”

— Dee Dee Myers

15. “Many differences are rooted in biology and reinforced through culture, so it’s important to acknowledge that. Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.”

— Dee Dee Myers

16. “Yes, Bill Clinton is a big flirt.”

— Dee Dee Myers

17. “And Clinton was like that – he saw the whole playing field. He didn’t just see the event that he was at or the circumstances of that week or that month. He saw the whole playing field all the time.”

— Dee Dee Myers

18. “Women communicate differently and process information differently, which leads them to resolve conflicts differently.”

— Dee Dee Myers

19. “President Clinton intentionally created a structure that was a little loose. And one that kept him a little in the center. He didn’t want one person filtering all the information that went to him. He had always operated with a lot of information coming in and a lot of stuff going out.”

— Dee Dee Myers

20. “Obama has become too dependent on formal speeches and set town halls. His idea of mixing it up is taking off his jacket.”

— Dee Dee Myers

21. “That someone like Obama could be elected president of the United States – with its unrivaled power and prestige – has begun to restore the country’s and the world’s faith in America as the land of opportunity.”

— Dee Dee Myers

22. “During my years as a press secretary, I developed a powerful internal filter, which worked to strip all things ‘off message’ from my thoughts before they came out of my mouth. It didn’t always work, of course, and I said more than a few things I regretted.”

— Dee Dee Myers

23. “Women have to be the biggest champions in the world of other women’s choices.”

— Dee Dee Myers

24. “The first time I met Bill Clinton was actually 1988.”

— Dee Dee Myers

25. “There is an institutional cynicism that causes reporters to question everything the President says, and the motives of everything the President and his Administration try to accomplish.”

— Dee Dee Myers

26. “Obama has made America cool again – and more than that, he’s made his own brand arguably the most powerful the world has ever known.”

— Dee Dee Myers

27. “Clinton’s resilience became sort of the secret weapon of the campaign. He was never going to just give up and get out.”

— Dee Dee Myers

28. “Research confirms that both Republican and Democratic women are more likely than their male counterparts to initiate and fight for bills that champion social justice, protect the environment, advocate for families, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.”

— Dee Dee Myers

29. “I was supposed to be authoritative, but at the same time had to be likeable, a quality that is a bonus, not a requirement, for men in the same position.”

— Dee Dee Myers

30. “Every press secretary faces an enormous amount of information. Events move really fast. You’re responsible for a tremendous amount of information, and again, a tremendous amount on competing agendas. Not everybody grease in the White House.”

— Dee Dee Myers

31. “Part of Obama’s persona is self-reliance. He’s calm; he’s cool; he’s self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton’s sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.”

— Dee Dee Myers

32. “Democrats single out glaring examples of tax preferences or spending priorities that favor the wealthy and Republicans cry ‘class warfare!’”

— Dee Dee Myers

33. “As women have played an increasingly important role in politics, there is no question that they’ve brought a different perspective, focusing attention on a broader set of issues and building alliances with other women.”

— Dee Dee Myers

34. “No reporter is flying around in borrowed twin-engine airplanes.”

— Dee Dee Myers

35. “One thing I think is least realistic is that there were five people that made decisions in the fictional ‘West Wing.’ In real life, there are about five million people that weigh in.”

— Dee Dee Myers

36. “Women’s particular experiences continue to shape not just their points of view but their actions, in the United States and around the world.”

— Dee Dee Myers

37. “Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me – just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity.”

— Dee Dee Myers

38. “A lot of people over time have had this kind of pattern in their relationship with Bill Clinton. You first meet him and you’re overwhelmed by his talent. He’s so energetic and articulate and full of ideas and he calls himself a congenital optimist and that optimism is contagious.”

— Dee Dee Myers

39. “My job is to be a spokesman – the spokesman, I suppose – for the President, for the White House, to do the daily briefings, to manage the press corps in terms of travel, day-to-day needs, access, interviews, all those issues.”

— Dee Dee Myers

40. “I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.”

— Dee Dee Myers

41. “Trying to negotiate getting a couple of kids to watch the same TV show requires serious diplomacy.”

— Dee Dee Myers

42. “To compare Whitewater to Watergate is a travesty.”

— Dee Dee Myers

43. “The press never accepts at face value that the President is taking a certain action because he wants to create jobs or because he believes that it is in the best interests of the American people or that he is genuinely committed to making life better for people.”

— Dee Dee Myers

44. “I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad – experience, how people look, what they bring to the job. But there’s no question women are paid less. Women don’t ask.”

— Dee Dee Myers

45. “I worked for a lot of candidates, in tough campaigns that lost. Most of my candidates lost until Bill Clinton. There was always a point where you look in their eyes and they knew it was over. And there was never that point with Clinton. He never quit. He never gave up.”

— Dee Dee Myers

46. “In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton’s campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn’t buy his alleged concern for the middle class.”

— Dee Dee Myers

47. “There are people in the public sector with a range of experiences that have no equivalent in business, but are essential to governing, like keeping a kid in school or helping someone get and hold a job. The value of those skills can’t easily be measured against a bottom line.”

— Dee Dee Myers

48. “Washington is still very much a male-oriented culture. Being from Los Angeles, I think it is less so there – there is less attachment to tradition, perhaps, there is more flexibility, more acceptance of change generally. That is partly because of Hollywood.”

— Dee Dee Myers

49. “No doubt, the White House thinks the American people know Obama’s story. But since the Inauguration, we’ve seen only the president’s present: his perfect family, his Ivy League elegance, his effortless mastery of complex issues. We never see him sweat. And we forget that he ever had to struggle.”

— Dee Dee Myers

50. “I don’t think women hold all the answers, but with their skills, their strengths, we can get to a better place.”

— Dee Dee Myers