Maureen Dowd Quotes

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.

Settling is about not embracing what is best for you and accepting what you really don't want. When you settle, you accept less than you deserve. Settling becomes a habit and a way of life, but it doesn't have to be. According to Maureen Dowd, "The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for

Romantic googling can be as dangerous as drunk text messaging. Of course hell hath no fury like a woman who Google-bombs her old flames name with a word like "impotent.

I don't understand men. I don't even understand what I don't understand about men.

Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.

I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read books and stories by bood writers. It's a hard thing to preach about. As Thelonious Monk once said about his field, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

Instead of broadening the choices of how to look good, we have only broadened the ways we try to look alike. Women are headed toward one face, one body and one expression.

We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.

Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day.

Who knows? If women all end up with the same face and body, men may gravitate toward the quirky. Then the chicks with the laugh lines and love handles will be the lucky ones.

We've become a nation of Frankensteins, and our monster is us. With everyone working so hard at altering their facades, we no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection.

Maureen Dowd - that catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen. She's such an empty vessel. One pleasure of reading the New York Times online is that I never have to see anything written by Maureen Dowd! I ignore her hypertext like spam for penis extenders.

Materialism has defeated feminism as well. In a sign of the times, Gloria Steinem was on the picket line when the first American DeBeers store opened on Fifth Avenue in June 2005, protesting the evictions of Bushmen in Botswana to make room for diamond miners and the charges that the company dealt in "blood diamonds" used to finance civil wars in Africa. Her presence meant nothing to young Hollywood beauties who are pleased to shill for the diamond industry in magazine layouts and personal appearances. As Steinem stood outside, Lindsay Lohan was inside the party, gushing over the possibility that she could get to wear one of the big rocks. Asked by reporters about the Bushmen controversy, she shrugged it off: "I don't get involved in any drama.

It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them.

American women are evolving backward--becoming more focused on their looks than ever. Feminism has been defeated by narcissism.

We had the Belle Epoque. Now we have the Botox Epoque, permeated by plastic emotions from antidepressants and plastic veneers from collagen, silicone, cosmetic surgery and Botox.

Women fear that men will have their way and then slither away. Men fear that women will come back and boil their bunnies.

Maureen Dowd, who wrote, “A.O.C. wanted to get glammed up and pal around with the ruling class at an event that’s the antithesis of all she believes in, a gala that makes every thoughtful American feel like Robespierre…

McChrystal never should have been hired for this job given the outrageous cover-up he participated in after the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. He was lucky to keep the job after his 'Seven Days in May' stunt in London last year when he openly lobbied and undercut the president on the surge. But with the latest sassing, and the continued Sisyphean nature of the surge he urged, McChrystal should offer his resignation. He should try subordination for a change.

Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's more of a man's world today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries.

She lives in the feminist "wishful-thinking world," as the Village Voice called it, dreamed up by creator Amy Sherman Palladino, where single moms raise brilliant daughters and men are nothing more than trifling distractions. I live in a post-feminist world that kicked in after the advent of Gilmore Girls, a place where Maureen Dowd asks Are Men Necessary? and we answer, "Not really." Modern girls may not talk as fast as the Gilmore girls or engage in witty repartee with colorful townsfolk, but as far as female empowerment goes, we're catching up fast.

McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men—(the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary)—must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened. So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can't punish the military because that would make him weak? It's the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses.

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.

{My mom] long ago advised me, when I was feeling blue or self-doubting about men, that the best thing to do was go out and buy a red lipstick or a red dress. 'It will be your red badge of courage,' she said.

So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine.

Trump is the Kim Kardashian of American politics, replacing substance with solipsism and issues debates with Twitter feuds, and showing a rare talent for grabbing the attention of an ADD nation round the clock as he tries to be Troll in Chief. “Celebrity

Given the electoral history of the Republicans since Nixon’s Southern Strategy, winning races by stirring up racist, homophobic and misogynist feelings, it was rich to see them criticizing Trump for those qualities. They simply wanted a nominee who would be a more subtle bigot, as party tradition demands. The

As much as anybody since George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, he has overtly sent dog whistles of race out to white working-class voters. That gratuitous defamation of group after group, person after person, is just anathema to Obama. He genuinely believes this guy would be a calamity for the country.” Unlike the Bushes, who outsourced their political thuggery, Donald Trump does his own wet work. “He

We have an out-of-control id taunting a tightly controlled superego. We have the king of winging it versus the queen of homework. She says he’s too unpredictable to be president, he says she’s too predictable. Trump can excite his crowds but falters on substance; Hillary has substance but falters on exciting her crowds. “The boor versus the bore,” Time’s Charlotte Alter call it.

We have two candidates with the highest unfavorables ever recorded and a majority of voters who feel stuck voting against, rather than for, someone. Both parties nominated the only person who could possibly lose to the other. Voters are agonizing about whether they can trust either candidate.

Will Trump, who has scant impulse control and who’s willing to say the most insulting, provocative things that people wouldn’t say at a dinner party much less a global forum, get into a tweet battle with a madman and start a world war? Will Hillary ever seem on the level? Or will she always be surrounded by a cordon of creepy henchmen and Clinton Inc. sycophants, shrouded in a miasma of money grabs and conveniently disappearing records and emails? Both

Over the years, I have written about the duality in Hillary that disturbs even many Democrats. She has the bright, idealistic public service side but it is offset by a dark ends-justify-the-means side. She’s confident and capable but she can also make decisions from a place of insecurity and paranoia.

This is a deeply, deeply polarized country not just by party but by class,” David Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Obama, told me. While Obama’s attention to nuance and emphasis on diplomacy was seen by many as a strength after the bellicose, black-and-white W., Axelrod said, now some find those qualities a weakness and yearn for a strongman. “There

Not to credit Donald Trump, because he’s crude and combative and an egomaniac, but in a weird way, he’s at least being candid. And I guess there’s something oddly thrilling about a guy who rips the mask off it all and is standing there as the naked id of politics. He is the destroyer of the old world.” The

He did not seem interested in raising his game beyond Twitter insults and ill-advised retweets (including one about Megyn Kelly as a “bimbo” and some that originated on white-supremacist message boards). Even the quietly supportive Melania told Donald to knock off the retweets. He

Afghanistan is more than the “graveyard of empires.” It’s the mother of vicious circles. —MAUREEN DOWD

In 1988, during the Mikhail Gorbachev “Gorby-mania” that was sweeping the country, Trump was so taken by Russia that he was easily fooled by a Gorbachev impersonator named Ronald Knapp. Knapp suddenly appeared at Trump Tower in a stretch limousine, shaking his hands together in the air like a boxing champ. Trump was so excited he ran down to meet the supposed Soviet leader. Maureen Dowd reported that a local TV man on the scene, Channel 5’s Gordon Elliot, affirmed, “There was absolutely no question he bought it.”16

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Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman, The Fabulous Bush & Baker Boys, New York Times Magazine, 5/6/90.

When I was in my early thirties I wrote a profile of Maureen Dowd. She was the sole female columnist at The New York Times then, and had been the second female White House correspondent in the paper’s history. She had started her career as an editorial assistant in 1974, the year I was born, and now she was fifty-three, had won the Pulitzer Prize, looked amazing, and lived alone. I remember sitting in the insanely decorated living room of her brownstone in Georgetown—the walls were blood red, the bookshelves were crowded with feathered fans, old Nancy Sinatra record jackets, a collection of bubbling motion lamps, another of mermaids, a dozen vintage martini shakers, all kinds of toy tigers—and being intoxicated by her peculiarity, independence, and success. I asked if she’d ever wanted children. She told me, “Everybody doesn’t get everything.” It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn’t get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. - Maureen Dowd

But maybe something new could work with the impossible child-man in the White House: positive reinforcement. That was very smart, Mr. President, not to tangle with the Persians, who have been engaged in geopolitics since 550 B.C., until you have a better sense of exactly what is going on here. Listen to your isolationist instincts and your base, not to batty Bolton. You don’t want to get mired in a war that could spill over to Saudi Arabia and Israel, sparking conflagrations from Afghanistan to Lebanon and beyond. Just remember: The Iranians are great negotiators with a bad hand and you are a terrible negotiator with a good hand.