Ann Richards Quotes

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

[Our understanding is] not intellectual, but instinctive.

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

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'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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Most people assume that physician language is akin to technical, non-understandable jargon. It does not have to be that way. Doctors do not perform witchcraft. They simply interpret what they are told and what tests reveal. They diagnose and prescribe treatment. Our responsibility is to help doctors know what is going on in our bodies and to insist on clear, precise, understandable language in response.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I have an awfully good life.

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

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

People don't know that New York really is just made up of a group of very small neighborhoods.

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

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.

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

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

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