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Irving Kristol Quotes
1920–2009 United States
Irving Kristol (22 January 1920 – 18 September 2009) was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism."
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31 quotes
The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.
Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995)
An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.
If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.
What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.
Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.
The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.
It requires strength of character to act upon one's ideas; it requires no less strength of character to resist being seduced by them.
Young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones; the old religions are pretty good.
There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
Power breeds responsibilities, in international affairs as in domestic -- or even private. To dodge or disclaim these responsibilities is one form of the abuse of power.
A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.
Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.
What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?
The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.
The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition. Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility.
A liberal is one who says that it's all right for an 18-year-old girl to perform in a pornographic movie as long as she gets paid the minimum wage.
Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978)
The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie -- but only if she is paid the minimum wage.
It was a new kind of class war — the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978)
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