An archive of spoken moments that defy paraphrase. Delivered aloud, preserved without correction, and often unintentionally revealing — these quotes live on not because they’re perfect, but because they’re perfectly broken.
“I don’t think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime,” Margaret Thatcher told a boy named Roger on BBC1 in 1973. She wasn’t hedging. She wasn’t speculating. She dismissed the idea outright. Six years later, she became Britain’s first — and longest-serving — female Prime Minister.
On February 19th, 2002, President George W. Bush addressed the Japanese Diet and quietly rewrote history. His reference to “a century and a half” of peaceful U.S.– Japan relations erased World War II from the timeline. This post threads that moment into a broader sweep of Bushisms — those surreal fragments of presidential speech that live on in public memory.
Don’t Mention the War: Bushisms from Tokyo to Texas Read More
