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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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Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
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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.
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One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.
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.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.
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The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods
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What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
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A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.
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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.
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There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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As a result of the efforts of Hayek .. and the many others who share his general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited.
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Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.
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