58 Quotes by Irving Kristol

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.

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.

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.

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.

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.

The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

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.

Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel... Jews don't like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.