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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

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Irving Kristol
Age: 89 †
Born: 1920
Born: January 22
Died: 2009
Died: September 18
Columnist
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Philosopher
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Brooklyn
New York
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More quotes by Irving Kristol

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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.
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What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
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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.
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There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
Irving Kristol
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An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.
Irving Kristol
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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.
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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
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Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol
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The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.
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The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.
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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
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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.
Irving Kristol
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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
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People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.
Irving Kristol
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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
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[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.
Irving Kristol
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A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.
Irving Kristol
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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
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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.
Irving Kristol
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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.
Irving Kristol