Quotes About Populism

#1. In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

George Will

#2. A lot of populists after populism died just became socialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism looked like it was going to take off. It didn't, of course, but a lot of people thought it was going to.

Thomas Frank

#3. You get these insurgent movements of populism, left and right. An insurgent movement of populism took my political party over in the UK for example.

Tony Blair

#4. There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.

Christopher Hitchens

#5. I would caution against fueling cheap populism. First of all, every German who has spent a vacation in Greece knows that the standard of living there isn't higher than it is in Germany. Second, Greece is paying a high price for European assistance.

Wolfgang Schauble

#6. Few things trigger fear and misconception more than economic tribulation, and nothing prompts elected officials to react with more simplistic populism.

David Harsanyi

#7. Reagan would be well advised to find his conservatism in the Constitution rather than to adopt a conservative populism. If he does the latter, he is likely to discover that the radical means of populism will overcome and outlast the conservative ends.

Harvey Mansfield

#8. I admire Ai Weiwei for his art and his activism. His art is beautiful in form, and in function embodies the principles of populism and social consciousness I aspire to in my own practice.

Shepard Fairey

#9. We now live in the era of fake consensus, or phoney populism, a condition in which galleries and homes are seen to succeed best where they manage feelings of non-difference.

Andrew O'Hagan

#10. No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.

Alexander Cockburn

#11. The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco- populism . Ecopopulism ... To change our laws and culture , the green movement justice , political solutions and social change.

Van Jones

#12. A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions.

Van Jones

#13. Populism is dangerous.

Benjamin Netanyahu

#14. Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

George Will

#15. Almost all religions from Buddhism to Islam feature either a humble prophet or a prince who comes to identify with the poor, but what is this if not populism? It is hardly a surprise if religions choose to address themselves first to the majority who are poor and bewildered and uneducated.

Christopher Hitchens

#16. If your work doesn't speak to people, it's beyond comprehension and risible, but if people engage with it, you become tarred with the brush of populism.

Antony Gormley

#17. I think a Donald Trump presidency raises a new kind of version of conservatism which more closely resembles a kind of Father Coughlin, America first populism and nativism and isolationism, than the confident, modern, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, engaged conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.

Bret Stephens

#18. Populism is not a style, it's a people's rebellion against the iron grip that big corporations have on our country - including our economy, government, media, and environment.

Jim Hightower

#19. I don't think there Is a way politically to beat "Insurgent Movement Of Populism".

Tony Blair

#20. Populism is ultimately sustained by the frustrated exasperation of ordinary people, by the cry I don't know what's going on, but I've just had enough of it! It cannot go on! It must stop!

Slavoj Zizek

#21. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#22. Instead, the polling business gives the patricians an idea of what the mob is thinking, and of how that thinking might be changed or, shall we say, "shaped." It is the essential weapon in the mastery of populism by the elite.

Christopher Hitchens

#23. Events in America show the extent to which democracy there is fuelled by populism - Barack Obama's victory is a manifestation not of Washington's need for change, but of America's. That is not how democracy works in England.

Andrew O'Hagan

#24. The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.

Mark Levin

#25. The question for Obama is how he can rein in the furies of populism while making us all feel the malefactors of great wealth are being sufficiently punished.

Tina Brown

#26. Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.

Umberto Eco

#27. [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

#28. Populism and elitism are the same thing. They are class prejudices, crude class prejudices that so-and-so, because they are uneducated, is less worthy, or so-and-so, because they are richer or more educated, is unworthy.

David Brooks

#29. In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.

Zephyr Teachout

#30. What in Mandela was seen as an almost saintly ability to conciliate could, in a lesser man, be read as weak-kneed populism.

Mark Gevisser

#31. Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

John Updike

#32. The problem is some of the populism on both the far left and the far right, it can make a Tweet but not make a policy. And, you know, when you are dealing with issues that are as important and serious as this, I understand why people search for simple solutions.

Tony Blair

#33. At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.

Diane Paulus

#34. Mike Huckabee represents something that is either tremendously encouraging or deeply disturbing, depending on your point of view: a marriage of Christian fundamentalism with economic populism.

Matt Taibbi

#35. My personal position is we have to look beyond the parties now and find a realistic solution to get us out of this crisis which would be to create growth and this isn't something that is going to happen by populism.

Eva Kaili

#36. But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie's capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism.

Stephen King

#37. I do not believe in populism. I am not a supporter of radical decisions. Practice has shown that usually these are harmful.

Valentina Matviyenko

#38. Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed.

Russell D. Moore

#39. Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.

Jill Lepore

#40. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933]

Cyril Connolly

#41. Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there's something wrong.

Nat Hentoff

#42. Populists (and 'national socialists') look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world 'behind the scenes'. Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.

Christopher Hitchens

#43. It's freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences and/or ridicule.

A.E. Samaan

#44. We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#45. There is little taste for 'high culture' especially in Evangelicalism, where the tendency has long been toward translation - making things accessible to the largest number of people.

James Davison Hunter

#46. If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and 'with malice toward none and charity for all' go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.

Henry A. Wallace

#47. The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.

Eduardo Galeano