Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristolwas an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neo-conservatism." As the founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the last half-century; after his death he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth22 January 1920
CountryUnited States of America
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.
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want
The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods
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.
[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.
Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable ... People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.
I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory.
A liberal is a person who sees a fourteen-year-old girl performing sex acts onstage and wonders if she's being paid minimum wage.
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.
There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.
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.