Erwin Hargrove Quotes

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.

I don't compromise my principles for politics.

Not parties, but principles.

I'd rather sink with a bad theory than swim with muddy pragmatism.

A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.

You know, I really do have some morals. I do actually care about people. And I do have a political standpoint.

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

One man with beliefs is equal to a thousand with only interests.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

… contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

If you stand for something, that means there are going to be people who support you and people who don't support you.

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.

I should say that all compromise is a "stepping down" of the Truth, is trying to reduce something which cannot be reduced, and that for anyone who has understood life these compromises are impossible.

Compromises lead you nowhere. You can't be happy doing something you don't believe in.

Values are more important than money.

We all have fundamental beliefs of one sort or another, and it is very threatening if somebody is saying they're wrong.

There are things I cannot do, costumes I cannot wear. When I have taken stands on things, it is because I have thought carefully about them.

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

I still want to hold on to my beliefs, and as long as I have that, I won't stray too far from politics.

You stand up for what you believe in.

Beauty is what I believe in. I want to act and make decisions based on what I believe.

I'm not ashamed of the things I believe and why I believe them.

I'm not a particularly ideological person. There's things, some values I feel passionately about.

Principle is a passion for truth.