William Smyth Quotes

I've found that balance is key. I'm no longer an extremist in any one direction.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

I'm not an extremist, you know.

The best position the government could assume would be that of moderation between opposite extremes of Ultra-Toryism and Radicalism

You can't really be passionately moderate. It's like wearing an 'Extra Medium' - it doesn't exist.

I'm quite moderate.

Centrism is bogus.

Britain's most useful role is somewhere between bee and dinosaur.

I'm a centrist.

It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.

Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing.

I'm what you would call an 'independent moderate.'

You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

I would consider myself more a passionate centrist.

People live in the middle. I think everyone does. Good is on one side, bad is on the other side, and we live in the middle.

I've always been about the balance - not sacrificing one thing for the other and not being an extremist.

It seems like the whole world is either with Israel or with Palestine. It seems like there is nobody who is actually in the middle, because the only loud people are the ones in the extreme.

People ask me if I'm liberal or conservative. I say neither - I'm pragmatic.

The middle of the road is a poor place to walk. It is a poor place to drive. It is a poor place to live.

The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.

The alternative to fanaticism and to death is not some miraculous realization that someone has been wrong and he has to apologize. No, the answer to fanaticism and to death is curiosity and compromise and concession.

Keep a mid course between two extremes.

In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.

I'm convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It's the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians.

Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.