Andrew Sullivan quotes

Andrew Sullivan is a British-American author, editor, and commentator known for his influential work on politics, religion, and culture. His writings, especially on his blog "The Dish," have sparked vital public debates and shaped opinions on topics such as same-sex marriage. He remains a prominent advocate for free speech and civil discourse in modern media. Here are 55 of his quotes:

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

Andrew Sullivan

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

Andrew Sullivan

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

Andrew Sullivan

Any president can start a war, and use the chaos of disorder that such a war creates as an indefinite argument for prolonging it. It's a war that keeps on giving. Failure means it's even more necessary to keep failing.

Andrew Sullivan

Homosexuality is like the weather. It just is.

Andrew Sullivan

What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

Andrew Sullivan

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

Andrew Sullivan

If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

Andrew Sullivan

It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.

Andrew Sullivan

When Bush says that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few, he forgot to mention that he was one of them.

Andrew Sullivan

When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves.

Andrew Sullivan

That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger - the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up.

Andrew Sullivan

When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, "Then there's no hope for me, Mum."

Andrew Sullivan

Even if it's deep unhappiness, it's your unhappiness.

Andrew Sullivan

I enjoy being around people who disagree with me; and I enjoy being in non-political contexts and activities.

Andrew Sullivan

The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.

Andrew Sullivan

I purge compulsively. I'm constantly shedding things.

Andrew Sullivan

No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country.

Andrew Sullivan

Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold.

Andrew Sullivan

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

Andrew Sullivan

When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary.

Andrew Sullivan

The relationship of black Americans to Obama is sociologically riveting.

Andrew Sullivan