Calvin Trillin Quotes

I was quite young when my dad went into politics but, as it went on, I became self-conscious about it.

It's very difficult, I would imagine, to distinguish father and daughter. And maybe some of it comes as I'm doing my thing and my father being a very strong political African figure for so many years. Whatever he does is almost like some kind of cloud on top.

I've often thought having a politician for a parent must be like having a constantly embarrassing uncle.

Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves.

I was born in 1957 as the second son of the late Sat Paul and Lalita Mittal. My father was a politician and, at one point of time, an MP. A gap of two years separates me from both my elder brother Rakesh and younger sibling Rajan.

Life itself has so much politics, why should I make it my profession? I'm just a politician's son, not a politician myself. Two politicians, that's my dad and elder brother, in the family are enough. I'm happy doing my own stuff in Bollywood.

What people see the first family do has an effect. And from a slightly different aspect, I think that family living in the White House is going to have a profound effect on many Americans.

Presidential legacies are valuable things, too valuable to be left up to historians.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Both my parents were working in politics when I was growing up, so going on stage was not that great a leap.

Certainly Nancy Reagan had an extraordinary effect on her husband. I'm truly not sure that, say, Laura Bush had that much effect on the Bush administration. She certainly, you know, seems to be a nice person who I think the public likes. But I can't really put my finger on any huge impact she's had.

I'm not interested in hiding from the fact that my parents are actors. I'm proud of them! It's very ordinary to pursue a career that your parents do, but when it's in the public eye, it becomes a complicated thing.

I can only ask people to be tolerant of the fact that the... pressures of wives of politicians is very, very strong.

For even the most seasoned observers of American politics, Barack Obama is a phenomenon.

He's a nice guy who will never change the Senate. He is the Senate. Eighteen years in politics, and he's got two cousins who are senators, too. Mark Udall's dad even ran for president.

In fact, when I fought the 1996 election, being Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter, it has its own plus and minus, so I told my father, 'please don't come for campaigning with me'.

Roger Ailes's effect on politics was much longer-lasting than Richard Nixon's, even though Nixon was elected president twice.

Imagine what Ivanka Trump life has been like? She's been eaten alive by the media. I have empathy for that.

Tony Blair has always said he will be judged by history. Now Alastair Campbell is history we await his judgment.

We [work] really hard to make sure we accomplish everything we want in life, but we don't think about being the president's daughter; we don't think about that, really.

Jean [Kennedy Smith, JFK's sister] told me she thinks the whole sports angle has been overplayed, that politics was central to him. This nonsense that he only went into politics because his older brother Joe was killed is not true. He was determined he was going to be in politics, but he would have waited his turn.

The Presidents job, is not to wield power himself, but to lead attention away from it.

Is there anybody out there that will point to Hillary Clinton and say, "Gosh, my life is so much better because of her"? Why aren't they on stage?

I know I'm going to have to get beyond being George H.W. Bush's son and Barbara's son -- for which I'm really proud. And I'm going to get beyond being George W.'s brother for which I am extraordinarily proud as well, there's a lot of interest in finding the ways that we are different and all this. Well, the simple fact is that we're all on our own life's journey -- my brothers and sister are different than me.

We have to judge presidents not only by the long-term consequences of their actions but also by how they make citizens in their own day feel. One reason that Nixon never succeeded in his comeback campaign is that he had such a negative impact on public trust at the time of his presidency.