Maureen Bridgid Dowd (b. January 14, 1952) is an American columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, she worked for Time magazine and the Washington Star, where she covered news as well as sports and wrote feature articles. Dowd joined the Times in 1983 as a metropolitan reporter and eventually became an Op-Ed writer for the newspaper in 1995. In 1999, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Clinton administration. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.
As blue chips turn into penny stocks, Wall Street seems less like a symbol of America's macho capitalism and more like that famous Jane Austen character Mrs. Bennet, a flibbertigibbet always anxious about getting richer and her 'poor nerves.'
Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.
Even when conservatives have all the marbles, they still act as if they're under siege. Now that they are under siege, it is no time for them to act as if they're losing their marbles.
Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.
Good and evil are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys.
I don't understand men. I don't even understand what I don't understand about men.
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.
It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them.
It's more of a man's world today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries.
Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.
The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing- or one person- at a time.
Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you're not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements.
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.
We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest.
When you go into a fight saying you're probably going to lose, you're probably going to lose.
Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day.
Women fear that men will have their way and then slither away. Men fear that women will come back and boil their bunnies.
Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last.
Zingers should glow with intelligence as well as drip with contempt.
The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all
If wit is the most sophisticated form of humor, pranks are the most juvenile.
A friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.
If you're famous enough, the rules don't apply.
When you're young, and even at times when you're older, it's hard to fathom this: What needs to be nurtured is the stuff that's different, that sets you apart from the pack, rather than the stuff that helps you blend in.
The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They're trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.
Perpetual optimism is annoying. It is a sign that you are not paying attention.
Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn't mean you're actually reaching people.
Celebrity is the religion of our time.
The idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional.
Don't write anything down, but save everything that anyone else writes down.
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(January 14 is also the birthday of Anaïs Nin and Andy Rooney.)
Categories: Maureen Dowd, Quotes of the day
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