Irving Kristol quotes

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity. (Irving Kristol)
People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place. View quote
Irving Kristol
[A neoconservative is] a liberal who has been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who got mugged by reality but has not pressed charges. View quote
Irving Kristol
[Conservatism:] Our revolutionary message ... is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation. View quote
Irving Kristol
Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel... Jews don't like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel. View quote
Irving Kristol
The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them. View quote
Irving Kristol
A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society. View quote
Irving Kristol
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. View quote
Irving Kristol
An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence. View quote
Irving Kristol
The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism. View quote
Irving Kristol
The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism. (Irving Kristol)
If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship. View quote
Irving Kristol
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. View quote
Irving Kristol
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. View quote
Irving Kristol
Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment. View quote
Irving Kristol
There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace. View quote
Irving Kristol
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.... View quote
Irving Kristol
What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived. View quote
Irving Kristol
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. View quote
Irving Kristol
After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant. No one, not even a university professor, really believes that. View quote
Irving Kristol
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)
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work. View quote
Irving Kristol
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. View quote
Irving Kristol
It was a new kind of class war - the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector. View quote
Irving Kristol
Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs. View quote
Irving Kristol