Mary McGrory Quotes

[On men:] On their best days, the best of them are eight years old.

Dogs, bless them, operate on the premise that human beings are fragile and require incessant applications of affection and reassurance. The random lick of a hand and the furry chin draped over the instep are calculated to let the shaky owner know that a friend is nearby.

Anyone who has undergone home repair lately knows that your everyday artisan uses language so loosely and makes false promises so glibly as to make your politicians, even the presidential candidate, seem like a model of accuracy and rectitude. 'Be there Wednesday at nine,' the workman will tell you. It is a lie. He is humoring you. He says it to silence you, the way you tell a child you will take it to Disneyland if it will stop crying.

Human sacrifice is much in vogue right now. The Republican right thinks that people who get on its nerves, especially women, should be sent to the stake ...

Baseball has a special place in our hearts. It is the game that shows us as we would like to be.

Appliances have idiosyncracies, just like us. Unfortunately they have picked up our less attractive traits - they are proud, spiteful, and unforgiving.

[On George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis:] Americans now know they can vote for a man who can't express his thoughts or a man who can't express his feelings.

We have a new class in this country: the deserving rich ... The deserving rich do nice things for each other. Comforting the unafflicted is something that comes naturally to them.

Baseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.

You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here.

My friend Phil has a theory that the Lord, having made teenagers, felt constrained to make amends and so created the golden retriever.

And the propensity of weak and empty people to follow a leader into the darkness from which there is no return is still flourishing, as ever.

I am hoping for better times. That's how you know us hapless gardeners - by our dirty fingernails and our absurd, unquenchable optimism about next year.

Haldeman is the only man in America in this generation who let his hair grow for a courtroom appearance.