Top 100 Molly Ivins Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.”

— Molly Ivins

2. “When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as ‘enemies,’ it’s time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.”

— Molly Ivins

3. “Listen to the people who are talking about how to fix what’s wrong, not the ones who just work people into a snit over the problems. Listen to the people who have ideas about how to fix things, not the ones who just blame others.”

— Molly Ivins

4. “I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

— Molly Ivins

5. “I know: “Guns Don’t Kill People.” But I suspect that they have something to do with it. If you point your finger at someone and say, “Bang, bang, you’re dead,” not much actually happens.”

— Molly Ivins

6. “Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn’t Them: It’s us.”

— Molly Ivins

7. “The first rule of holes: When you’re in one stop digging.”

— Molly Ivins

8. “What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit.”

— Molly Ivins

9. “Texas is a fine place for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses.”

— Molly Ivins

10. “On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes.”

— Molly Ivins

11. “Freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right.”

— Molly Ivins

12. “Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman.”

— Molly Ivins

13. “Many a time freedom has been rolled back – and always for the same sorry reason: fear.”

— Molly Ivins

14. “Americans are not getting screwed by the Republican Party. They’re getting screwed by the large corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.”

— Molly Ivins

15. “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel – it’s vulgar.”

— Molly Ivins

16. “Bad policies, stupid policies, gutless policies have real consequences.”

— Molly Ivins

17. “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.”

— Molly Ivins

18. “And the funny thing is, I’ve always been an optimist – it’s practically a congenital disorder with me.”

— Molly Ivins

19. “I think most of us become nicer as we get older, less judgmental, less full of certitude; life tends to knock a few corners of us as we go through. Cancer, divorce, teenagers, and other plagues make us give up on expecting ourselves – or life – to be perfect, which is a real relief.”

— Molly Ivins

20. “You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.”

— Molly Ivins

21. “I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.”

— Molly Ivins

22. “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.”

— Molly Ivins

23. “I am not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We’d turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don’t ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.”

— Molly Ivins

24. “I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.”

— Molly Ivins

25. “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.”

— Molly Ivins

26. “Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation notably lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice.”

— Molly Ivins

27. “It’s like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you’re wrong.”

— Molly Ivins

28. “There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.”

— Molly Ivins

29. “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.”

— Molly Ivins

30. “Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world.”

— Molly Ivins

31. “Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory.”

— Molly Ivins

32. “Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system or we lose the democracy.”

— Molly Ivins

33. “Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.”

— Molly Ivins

34. “It’s hard to convince people that you’re killing them for their own good.”

— Molly Ivins

35. “As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against ’em anyway, you don’t belong in office.”

— Molly Ivins

36. “I still believe in Hope – mostly because there’s no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.”

— Molly Ivins

37. “Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?”

— Molly Ivins

38. “I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point – race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.”

— Molly Ivins

39. “I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying – it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.”

— Molly Ivins

40. “Sit up, join up, get on line, get in touch, find out who’s raising hell and join them. No use waiting on a bunch of wussy politicians.”

— Molly Ivins

41. “Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life – it gave me me. It provided me the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life.”

— Molly Ivins

42. “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.”

— Molly Ivins

43. “It’s hard to argue against cynics – they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.”

— Molly Ivins

44. “As I have pointed out time and again, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to send little kids to school than it is to let them grow up into young thugs who have to be sent to prison, not to mention the savings in the wear and tear on the nerves, property, and safety of the rest of the citizenry.”

— Molly Ivins

45. “You can’t ignore politics, no matter how much you’d like to.”

— Molly Ivins

46. “Some days, I’d feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office – at least he doesn’t lie about the weather.”

— Molly Ivins

47. “If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.”

— Molly Ivins

48. “I’ve always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.”

— Molly Ivins

49. “The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.”

— Molly Ivins

50. “Until June 26, 1918, all Texans could vote except “idiots, imbeciles, aliens, the insane and women.”

— Molly Ivins