58 Quotes by Irving Kristol

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

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.

People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.

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.