1
If compassion and mercy are not compatible with politics, " Ford said, "then something is the matter with politics.Nancy Gibbs
2
Nixon to Clinton: "When seeking advice from people who are more experienced than you, tell them what you plan to do first, and then ask for their reaction. Don't ask for their advice, and then ignore it. That way you save on bruised feelings.Nancy Gibbs
3
Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.Nancy Gibbs
4
Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.Nancy Gibbs
5
For the truly faithful no miracle is necessary. For those who doubt no miracle is sufficient.Nancy Gibbs
6
Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.Nancy Gibbs
7
Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager.Nancy Gibbs
8
A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights.Nancy Gibbs
9
On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.Nancy Gibbs
10
Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.Nancy Gibbs
11
Pour a liquid out of its container, and it changes shape, fills the space you give it. If you give children a lot of space, it may surprise you where they'll go and the shape they'll take.Nancy Gibbs
12
The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.Nancy Gibbs
13
Barack Obama wants teacher service scholarships.Nancy Gibbs
14
'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.Nancy Gibbs
15
The leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 worldwide is not accident or violence or disease; it is complications from pregnancy. Girls under 15 are up to five times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well.Nancy Gibbs
16
Even if it wasn't always morning in America during the years of his presidency, Reagan's eagerness to insist that it was tapped into a longing among voters. They didn't want to picture themselves turning down their thermostats and buttoning up their cardigans. They wanted to strut again. Reagan opened his arms and said, 'Walk this way.'Nancy Gibbs
17
After 9/11, whatever the evidence of intelligence failures, many people still saw that attack as almost unimaginable, so brutal and brazen an assault.Nancy Gibbs
18
Making distinctions is part of learning. So is making mistakes.Nancy Gibbs
19
A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon.Nancy Gibbs
20
I've always found that once you're in the door of a place and you have the chance to show how you operate and how talented you are, then anything can happen.Nancy Gibbs
21
Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do.Nancy Gibbs
22
Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.Nancy Gibbs
23
In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion.Nancy Gibbs
24
There are many things that matter much more than an editor's gender in shaping the direction of the leadership.Nancy Gibbs
25
Right now, doctors can test for about 2, 500 medical conditions, but they only can treat about 500 of those. So what do you do with the knowledge about the others?Nancy Gibbs
26
The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political - and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone's deeply held beliefs.Nancy Gibbs
27
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.Nancy Gibbs
28
The real luxury travel of the modern age is not through space it's through time.Nancy Gibbs
29
In design as in life, smart can also mean wise, kind, inspiring - and cost-effective. And that has a charm all its own.Nancy Gibbs
30
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright would baptize Obama, perform his marriage to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, baptize their daughters, and draw him into the raucous, restless family of faith that Obama had never known before.Nancy Gibbs
31
Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.Nancy Gibbs
32
Enter politics, and you enter the glass house; there are no secrets and no places to hide.Nancy Gibbs
33
Our children will outwit us if they want; for when it comes to technology, they hold the higher ground. Unlike other tools passed carefully and ceremonially from one generation to the next - the sharp scissors, the car keys - this is one they understand better than we do.Nancy Gibbs
34
The millennials were raised in a cocoon, their anxious parents afraid to let them go out in the park to play. So should we be surprised that they learned to leverage technology to build community, tweeting and texting and friending while their elders were still dialing long-distance?Nancy Gibbs
35
Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.Nancy Gibbs
36
The days of the Pentagon Papers debates seem long past, when a sudden transparency yielded insight into fights over war and peace and freedom and security; the transparency afforded by Twitter and Facebook yields insights that extend no further than a lawmaker's boundless narcissism and a culture's pitiless prurience.Nancy Gibbs
37
Emotional life grows out of an area of the brain called the limbic system, specifically the amygdala, whence come delight and disgust and fear and anger.Nancy Gibbs
38
All our efforts to guard and guide our children may just get in the way of the one thing they need most from us: to be deeply loved yet left alone so they can try a new skill, new slang, new style, new flip-flops. So they can trip a few times, make mistakes, cross them out, try again, with no one keeping score.Nancy Gibbs