Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Irving Kristol (American Political Writer)

Irving Kristol (1920–2009,) fully Irving William Kristol, was an American political essayist, editor, and publisher. One of the most influential public intellectuals of the twentieth century, he is celebrated as an intellectual founder and champion of the neoconservative movement in the United States.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Jewish immigrants, Kristol studied at City College of New York in Harlem. He held academic posts, including as professor of social thought at New York University 1969–87.

A gifted journalist with firm ideological commitments, Kristol defended conservative ideals in opposition to the dominant liberalism of the 1960s and 70s. He played a leading role in promoting the concept of supply-side economics, which insisted that tax cuts significantly boost savings, investment, and work effort and thereby increase productivity and economic growth. He helped make conservatism a reigning ideology in America for at least two decades. He contributed to the resurgence of the Republican Party in the late 1960s.

Kristol influenced generations of intellectuals and policymakers. His Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995) explained the contemporary political situation, the crisis of liberalism, and the limitations of conservatism. His essays were collected in various volumes: On the Democratic Idea in America (1972,) Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978,) Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (1983,) Neoconservatism: An Autobiography of an Idea (1998,) and the posthumous The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942–2009 (2011.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Irving Kristol

What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.
Irving Kristol

Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live – not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.
Irving Kristol
Topics: Welfare

People need religion. It’s a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.
Irving Kristol
Topics: Ethics

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol
Topics: Government, Equality, Democracy

It requires strength of character to act upon one’s ideas; it requires no less strength of character to resist being seduced by them.
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.
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.
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.
Irving Kristol

Doing good isn’t [that] hard. It’s just doing a lot of good that is very hard. If your aims are modest, you can accomplish an awful lot. When your aims become elevated beyond a reasonable level, you not only don’t accomplish much, you can cause a great deal of damage.
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.
Irving Kristol
Topics: Patience, Wisdom, Hope, Resilience

When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious.
Irving Kristol

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.
Irving Kristol
Topics: Success is not everything, Success

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
Topics: Life

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.
Irving Kristol

No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals
Irving Kristol
Topics: Nation

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