Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel strongly that the state would not be well-served by having a governor and speaker of the House from the same family and have never planned to run for governor if that would be the case. With Speaker Madigan planning to continue in office, I will not run for governor.
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has actually started using a phrase lately - 'Raise our gaze.' He's exactly right, too. That's what I'd like to see in a presidential candidate. I don't like the bricks being thrown back and forth. That's not inspiring to me and to most of our electorate, I think.
Coy Wire played in the NFL for 9 years and is now a motivational speaker and has a book out called 'Change Your Mind.' He is an amazing person with such positive energy! When Kroy and I first met and started dating, there weren't a whole lot of people that supported us, but Coy always did.
After my second No. 1, my record company, Warner Brothers, gave me a beautiful present - quite unique at the time - one of the very first Sony stereos which had speaker and radio included so I could record the radio and build up cassette tapes of music, gospel singing, adverts, evangelists.
The progress in Iraq is still fragile. And it could still be reversed. Iraq still faces innumerable challenges, and they will be evident during what will likely be a difficult process as the newly elected Council of Representatives selects the next prime minister, president, and speaker of the council.
While I am talking about private sector job creation, the cap-and-trade energy tax, Speaker Pelosi's health-care bill and card-check legislation, Washington Democrats are defending groups like ACORN. They are on the wrong side of the issues and know their views are wrong for Arkansas, so they attack me.
It's kind of interesting, because hacking is a skill that could be used for criminal purposes or legitimate purposes, and so even though in the past I was hacking for the curiosity, and the thrill, to get a bite of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, I'm now working in the security field as a public speaker.
As great a public speaker as I am, I don't know have - I don't - I don't have the words to describe Cub fans who welcomed me as a rookie, were patient through my 1-for-32 start, and took me into their homes and into their hearts and treated me like a member of their family. You picked me up when I was down.
When I moved to Minnesota, I found there was a thriving and determined movement, a grassroots movement, to revitalize the Ojibwe language. And I've never come to be a competent speaker. I have to say that right now. But even learning the amount of Ojibwe that one can at my age is a life-altering experience.
My process is walking down to the locker room, laying everything out to how I like it. I'm very particular about setting up my bags and my dressing situation. I love to pull out that portable speaker and blare music even if nobody else likes it. To me, its just keeping everything the same every single night.
On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president.
I was always accused of being too stiff. In 1974, when I ran my first primary race for state rep, I was chief aide to the speaker of the House, I knew the issues and understood state government. But what I found out the hard way is that you can know all the ins and outs but people want to know you, your family.
Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.
It's not about what the speaker wants. It's not about necessarily what I want. There's two other principles involved here. It's what the constituents in my district want, and they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling unless there were significant structural reforms and spending cuts to help us balance our budget.
I like to play around with people who don't know me. Often I'm talking to people through my speaker phone, and after 10 minutes or so they say, 'Wait a minute, Marlee, how can you hear me?' They forget I have an interpreter there who is signing to me as they talk. So I say, 'You know what? I can hear on Wednesdays.'
Throughout my life, I've always believed that the sole purpose of public service is to improve the lives of the people around us. From the Freeport Town Council to serving as Speaker of the State House, I've kept that sense of purpose close to my heart - consistently and passionately asking myself how we make progress.
After Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, we were told, 'She's the first female speaker of the House, so whether we like it or not, we've got to handle this with kid gloves. Don't go after Speaker Pelosi. You can go after other people, but you'll be branded as mean and evil if you go after the first female Speaker of the House.'
Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning.
I've criticized Republicans for their lack of fiscal discipline when they controlled Congress before 2007. However, that is no excuse to just continue with more of the same or, as the case is now, to make it worse. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's budget, we will double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10.
I think the speaker of the House in Congress should be like the Massachusetts speaker: all-powerful. He should appoint committee chairmen and remove them if they stray from the party line. He should be answerable only to the caucus, which can remove him at any time. I'd throw the seniority system out on its ear in Congress.
If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.
One of the things that I did before I ran for president is I was a professional speaker. Not a motivational speaker - an inspirational speaker. Motivation comes from within. You have to be inspired. That's what I do. I inspire people, I inspire the public, I inspire my staff. I inspired the organizations I took over to want to succeed.
If you'd said to me when I was 21, 'You're going to get into parliament, be a senior minister of state, shadow health secretary, shadow home secretary, a privy councillor, be endorsed by the Times as a candidate for Speaker, have four novels published, and then have great fun after you retire,' I'd have said, 'That sounds like a good life.'
Whether you're president or speaker, if you're wrong, we need to stand up and point it out. That's what Martin Luther King had talked about: being judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. So some of us pounded away on some of the ridiculous policies of Pelosi - and lo and behold, over time, the public began to see.
Without medical records that he hasn't released, we can't know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother's manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms - bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees - that go beyond the ordinary politician's normal narcissism.
