Ron Suskind Quotes

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it. ~ Ron Suskind

The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen. ~ Ron Suskind

Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status. ~ Ron Suskind

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches. ~ Ron Suskind

A little known area often defines the fortunes of leaders
management skills. ~ Ron Suskind

If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat. ~ Ron Suskind

If the breadth of perspectives is wide enough to represent the fullest range of views, consensus is unlikely. If consensus is swiftly achieved, it probably means too few voices have been heard. ~ Ron Suskind

An exchange student from Afghanistan "finds himself in the midst of America's circus of self-invention" as he experiences Halloween for the first time. His hosts bauble, "It's the greatest of holidays when you can become anything you want. ~ Ron Suskind

A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate.
She said, simply, "But what do YOU think? ~ Ron Suskind

Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs. ~ Ron Suskind

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, t ~ Ron Suskind

For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes. ~ Ron Suskind

The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place. ~ Ron Suskind

It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying. ~ Ron Suskind

The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere. ~ Ron Suskind

As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter - an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn't feel trustworthy. Sometimes it's a quote or incident that's too perfect - a feeling I always had when reading stories by Stephen Glass in the New Republic. Sometimes it's too many errors of fact, the overuse of anonymous sources, or signs that a reporter hasn't dealt fairly with people or evidence. And sometimes it's a combination of flaws that produces a ring of falsity, the whiff of a bad egg. There's no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind. ~ Jacob Weisberg

Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions. ~ Ron Suskind

Hebrews 11:1," says Mr. Taylor. "The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen." "NO. Wrong-you messed it!" Cedric laughs. "It goes: 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Man, Mr. Taylor, you always getting 'em wrong." Mr. Taylor howls, "All right, extra point for you," but, as usual, he wrestles the boy back to middle ground, thwarting an outright victory, "The Word, of course, is the Word my young friend. But make it into what's right for you. That's the lesson for today. Take from the Holy Scripture only what you need, nothing more. ~ Ron Suskind

What can we do? It's not dismissive or resigned. He really wants to know. ~ Ron Suskind

I absolutely reject that idea that the press is liberal and what it does is liberal. In my view, it's like accusing a doctor of malpractice or a lawyer of malfeasance. ~ Ron Suskind

He was confronted at an early age with adult-strength realizations about powerlessness, desperation, and distrust, taking his dose right alongside the overwhelmed adults. This steady stream of shocks and realizations leaves so many boys raised in poor, urban areas stumbling toward manhood with a hardened exterior masking deep insecurities. ~ Ron Suskind

I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen ~ Ron Suskind

Security is by far the city's predominant business. ~ Ron Suskind

The key is to put your outrage in a place where you can get it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you're asked to explain new ideas or explain what you observed two people who share none of your experiences. ~ Ron Suskind

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,' ~ Ron Suskind

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world. ~ Ron Suskind

I think that there's a lot of anxiety out there in people wanting their children to be part of the mainstream, to achieve based on the well-worn yardsticks. ~ Ron Suskind

Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance. ~ Ron Suskind

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? ~ Ron Suskind

Author describes auto CEO's decisions to drive rather than fly to Washington as "showy penitence". ~ Ron Suskind

I'm [Paul O'Neill] an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me. ~ Ron Suskind

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot. ~ Ron Suskind

He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does. ~ Ron Suskind

Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism. ~ Ron Suskind

These were lobbyists - many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings. ~ Ron Suskind

When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance. ~ Ron Suskind

In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them. ~ Ron Suskind

That's not the part that gnaws at Rolf. It's the last part, where Ezekiel says that if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them ... I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood. ~ Ron Suskind

Every person has their pantheon - the Bible, Hollywood, Shakespeare - their way of understanding the world. ~ Ron Suskind

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction. ~ Ron Suskind

If you write something that gets a bad response, or someone commits candor or is off message, there are often consequences almost immediately when it appears in the paper or a magazine, that somebody gets called into the boss's office. And sometimes it can result in a loss of access for the reporter. ~ Ron Suskind

I don't have to deal with the issues of the daily news cycle. ~ Ron Suskind

You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds. ~ Ron Suskind

Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force. ~ Ron Suskind

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees. ~ Ron Suskind

The whole game was about confidence, as it always was. Everything was fine - until it wasn't. ~ Ron Suskind

The fact is, I can vote for anybody; independents, Republicans, Democrats. But I'm a registered Democrat in the District of Columbia. ~ Ron Suskind

He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules. ~ Ron Suskind

He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose. ~ Ron Suskind

All of the leading terrorism experts are clear on one thing: that in terms of protecting America, we are almost never going to know a place or a time of an attack. ~ Ron Suskind

Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness. ~ Ron Suskind

Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin. ~ Ron Suskind

You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken. ~ Ron Suskind

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering. ~ Ron Suskind

There are two worlds: the world where nothing is sacred except money, an the other world, where everything is sacred. ~ Ron Kauk

The enabler will love the addict into darkness. The addict becomes a shadow of the person they once were. The enablers love is blind and selfish. Blind, because they cannot see the selfishness, when they cradle their own emotions over the addict's recovery. It will always be tough love, support and lots of praying to keep an addict clean. The underlined reason for the substance abuse can only be found when the addict is thinking clearly. ~ Ron Baratono

People who believe they are acting with the mandate of God, who see others who don't share their beliefs as inferior in the eyes of God, make dangerous leaders. Just ask Osama Bin Laden. ~ Ron Reagan

They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being served coffee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated with exam review.
"Robes," she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag. "Polyjuice Potion…Invisibility Cloak…Decoy Detonators…You should each take a couple just in case…Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears…"
They gulped down their breakfast, then set off upstairs, Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak-and-kidney pie ready for them when they returned.
"Bless him," said Ron fondly, "and when you think I used to fantasize about cutting off his head and sticking it on the wall. ~ J.K. Rowling

I think the most important thing really was that you could take very personal ideas and present them to an audience in entertaining ways. ~ Ron Howard

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later ....... ~ Patrick Suskind

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. ~ Ron Paul

Is that a Sneakoscope?" said Hermione interestedly, standing up for a better look. "Yeah ... mind you, it's a very cheap one," Ron said. "It went haywire just as I was tying it to Errol's leg to send it to Harry." "Were you doing anything untrustworthy at the time?" said Hermione shrewdly. "No! Well ... I wasn't supposed to be using Errol. You know he's not really up to long journeys ... but how else was I supposed to get Harry's present to him? ~ J.K. Rowling

Create a compelling service vision. When people want to, they will. ~ Ron Kaufman

Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes, said Ron, ~ J.K. Rowling

Any bull market covers a multitude of sins, so there may be all sorts of problems with the current system that we won't see until the bear market comes. ~ Ron Chernow

If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both. ~ Ron Paul

God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Progressive. n. One who is unable to distinguish between novelty and enlightenment. ~ Ron Brackin

You cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization. ~ Ron Reagan

After being Washington's aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories. ~ Ron Chernow

I listened to time clicking like hooves on pavement. But time isn't something you can rein in. It moves on without pause, taking us with it no matter how much we wish it otherwise. ~ Ron Rash

The hardest achievement in acting - in my opinion, anyway - is nailing a role that absolutely nobody else could have played. Pacino owned Michael Corleone ... but DeNiro could have owned it as well. Who else, though, but Val Kilmer could have nailed Jim Morrison? Does anyone besides Will Ferrell pull off Ron Burgundy? ~ Bill Simmons

We're all naturally curious when we're eight years old. But as most people get older, they become less and less curious, so they ask other people to be curious for them. That's what I do for a living. ~ Ron Miriello

I like Mitt Romney as a person. I think he's a dignified person. But I have no common ground on economics. He doesn't worry about the Federal Reserve. He doesn't worry about foreign policy. He doesn't talk about civil liberties, so I would have a hard time to expect him to ever invite me to campaign with him. ~ Ron Paul

Making an honest mistake is acceptable. Failing to fix it is not. ~ Ron Kaufman

Only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions. ~ Ron Paul

No man is happy without a goal, and no man can be happy without faith in his own ability to reach that goal. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

It's amazing that people don't understand that the more the market is involved and the smaller the government, the lower the price, the better the distribution, and the higher the quality. ~ Ron Paul

I think you always hope you can play forever, but you always realize that time will come ... I was fortunate I was able to make a decision, move on and do it comfortably. ~ Ron Francis

Faith is such a wonderful thing. Without it, we would be panicky when we feel like we're standing alone and when the things we need and yearn for seem to be beyond our reach. ~ Ron Brackin

You can't solve problems until you understand the other side." –Jeffrey Manber ~ Ron Garan

I've been leading newsrooms for a while now and it's been an honor serving as Editor in Chief of N.J., but I really think that my best shot at moving the needle in politics is by getting close to it - by reading, reporting, tweeting and writing. ~ Ron Fournier

A good Dianetic auditor can take a broken-down, sorrow-drenched lady of thirty-eight and knock out her past periods of physical and mental pain and have on his hands somebody who appears to be twenty-five-and a bright, cheerful twenty-five at that. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

The air of a deposed prince. falsehood as restorative-if they wouldnt do that if they wouldnt do all that they do. the body as traitor the body as foe. she's thinking about mythology,about reluctant daphne/ relentless apollo. if she could, as daphne did, cry out to mother earth for protection. and have every suitors find a laurel tree in his arms. people would still look up to her. misjudge her. misunderstand her. worship her evn[damn druids]. or carve someone elses name into her. 'oh sweetie dont take things so seriously: the world is your oister' just as she thot, the world is something slimy in a shell. he's so proud of his knavery. okay, she's been vainglorious about her sins too but shes tired of that. 'if you love someone you accept him as he is, but if you accept him as he is than you dont really love him because if you did youd want whats best for him and that usually means he should be better than he is. a meadowy susuration that she used to pretend to like. but not anymore. shes sick of 'huh?' too, that interjection of ignorance. 'love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.'-Feodor Dostoyevsky. she wants to kiss him. but just in some neutral way. some agape-not-eros way. like disciples kiss. or brave french freedom fighters. 'for i the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visisting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children'-Exodus 20:5 'its just stuff that i thot was interesting. its not, you know, a rorshach. its not like somebody could r ~ Ron Koertge

Washington bureaucrats have classified the very air we exhale as a pollutant and have gone unchallenged in this incredible assertion. The logical consequence is that there will come a time when we will have to buy a government permit just to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from our own lungs! ~ Ron Paul

He's not only a good player, but he's spiteful in the nicest sense of the word. ~ Ron Atkinson

I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Perhaps the single most important point for parents to follow is the importance of giving goals to a child. And the most important goal is that of growing up to be an adult. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

As the Dark Lord becomes ever more powerful, your race is set still more firmly above mine! Gringotts falls under Wizarding rule, house-elves are slaughtered, and who amongst the wand-carriers protests?"
"We do!" said Hermione. She had sat up straight, her eyes bright. "We protest! And I'm hunted quite as much as any goblin or elf, Griphook! I'm a Mudblood!"
"Don't call yourself - " Ron muttered.
"Why shouldn't I?" said Hermione. "Mudblood, and proud of it! I've got no higher position under this new order than you have, Griphook! It was me they chose to torture, back at the Malfoys'! ~ J.K. Rowling

I'd like to think of myself as the flavor of the decade. ~ Ron Paul

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever. ~ Ron White

I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card. ~ Ron Paul

Then the night lessened, the clouds ashened slightly, and the men became starkly black and brown against the gray of the snow. ~ Ron Hansen