Helen Thomas

“I think I'll work all my life. When you're having fun, why stop having fun?”

“I'm decrepit but I don't want to give up, and I love my work.”

“I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press.”

“Clinton is the first female to be taken seriously for the highest office in the land. She has the credentials, the stamina and she is a good campaigner. Her detractors in both parties like to say she can't win, but they may be proven wrong.”

“When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.”

“I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.”

“I can remember the morning after President Nixon won re-election in 1972. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called a Cabinet meeting and told the members: 'You are all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes;' and asked for their resignations.”

“I'm not anti-Jewish; I'm anti-Zionist.”

“Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.”

“As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.”

“All of us who covered the Reagans agreed that President Reagan was personable and charming, but I'm not so certain he was nice. It's hard for me to think of anyone as 'nice' when I hear him say 'The homeless are homeless because they want to be homeless.'”

“I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.”

“We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel. You can't open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but if you say one thing about Israel, and you're off limits.”

“There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.”

“I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.”

“I'm of Arab background.”

“The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.”

“I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.”

“Every President hates the Press.”

“The presidency awed me, but presidents do not. Perhaps I have always expected too much of them, but I believe that when they reach the highest office in the land, they should live up to the greatest honor that can come to a person in American political life. Some have stood the test better than others.”