Kristol Quotes

#1. Back in George W. Bush's second term, when diplomatic realism began to overtake foolish bellicosity, the president developed one of his patented nicknames for the two most powerful neoconservative journalists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer: he called them 'the Bomber Boys.'

Joe Klein

#2. The people who got everything wrong are back on TV talking about the place they got all wrong? Cheney, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle. It's like Satan's VIP list for Hell.

Bill Maher

#3. What rules the world is ideas," Kristol once wrote, "because ideas define the way reality is perceived.

Anonymous

#4. Have you ever met a war you didn't love?

William Kristol

#5. It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when modernity itself is undergoing a kind of spiritual collapse ...

Irving Kristol

#6. Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.

William Kristol

#7. In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

Bill Kristol

#8. These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

William Kristol

#9. I personally - if I were designing the tax code - would have a tax code in which Mitt Romney paid more than 13 percent, given what I know about the kind of investments he made money from.

Bill Kristol

#10. Republicans can also point to an alternate path. They can draw upon genuine experts to explain what should be done.

William Kristol

#11. One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.

Irving Kristol

#12. If we free the people of Iraq, we will be respected in the Arab world ... and I think we will be respected around the world.

William Kristol

#13. The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.

Irving Kristol

#14. I've always rebelled a little when people say, 'My Jewish values lead me to really care about the poor.' I know some Christians who care about the poor, too.

William Kristol

#15. The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods

Irving Kristol

#16. [the war in Iraq] could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East

William Kristol

#17. White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.

William Kristol

#18. The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.

Irving Kristol

#19. People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.

Irving Kristol

#20. Shouldn't Democrats insist that Sen. Durbin step down as their whip, the number two man in their leadership?

Bill Kristol

#21. A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

Irving Kristol

#22. Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Irving Kristol

#23. If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.

Irving Kristol

#24. It was a new kind of class war
the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.

Irving Kristol

#25. No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals

Irving Kristol

#26. Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.

Bill Kristol

#27. Anyone who knows anything about journalism knows that reporters are rarely in a position to investigate anything. They lack the authority to subpoena witnesses, to cross-examine, to scrutinize official records. They are lucky to get their phone calls returned.

Irving Kristol

#28. 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.

Irving Kristol

#29. The trouble with politics and political coverage today is that there's too much liberal bias ... There's too much tilt toward the left-wing agenda. Too much apology for liberal policy failures. Too much pandering to liberal candidates and causes.

William Kristol

#30. 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.

Irving Kristol

#31. Iraq's always been very secular.

William Kristol

#32. All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

Bill Kristol

#33. The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

Bill Kristol

#34. 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.

Irving Kristol

#35. The most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

Irving Kristol

#36. Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children I tend to think it's a good idea.

William Kristol

#37. Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.

William Kristol

#38. If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

Irving Kristol

#39. [Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people' ... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons ... We ... are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.

William Kristol

#40. 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.

Irving Kristol

#41. Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

Bill Kristol

#42. American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

William Kristol

#43. Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

Irving Kristol

#44. A conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.

Irving Kristol

#45. If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over.

Bill Kristol

#46. The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

Irving Kristol

#47. You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.

Irving Kristol

#48. Yuppies don't have loyalty. They have useful relationships and meaningful encounters.

William Kristol

#49. Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.

Bill Kristol

#50. Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower.

William Kristol

#51. If Romney explains why where we are with Obama is unacceptable, why whither we are tending is even worse - and why his own alternative path forward is superior - then we trust the American people to make the right choice in November.

Bill Kristol

#52. While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president.

Bill Kristol

#53. Only liberal organizations are clearly designated [in the press] as "nonpatisan, nonprofit." Non-liberal research organizations are always identified as "right-wing" or "conservative."

Irving Kristol

#54. A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.

Irving Kristol

#55. 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.

Irving Kristol

#56. Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness.

Bill Kristol

#57. Conservative policies have on the whole worked - insofar as any set of policies can be said to 'work' in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

Bill Kristol

#58. Bush is no conservative.

Bill Kristol

#59. Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

Irving Kristol

#60. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.

William Kristol

#61. There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.

Irving Kristol

#62. There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

Bill Kristol