David Frum Quotes

Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can’t govern 300 million people—or 180 million when Kennedy was president—by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric.

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

The goal isn't, and shouldn't be, to block Hillary Clinton. The goal is to make sure a potential President Clinton is beholden to a better Congress and a better Democratic Party.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

I [Moses] am not a man of words.

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

Donald Trump's more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says.

Rhetoric matters, but at the end of the day policy matters more.

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions.

Somebody had to bring the truth to the doorstep of this president.

There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.

I don't want to live in a world where Donald Trump is the President. He is not doing anything in Baltimore, but I am dedicated to using whatever platform I have to make sure that he is not the President. This is not simply a disagreement about ideas. It's a disagreement about values, and the values that he espouses are values of bigotry and hate, and that isn't OK.

Mr. President, you’re entitled as a president to your own airplane, and to your own house, but not to your own facts.

A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of politics.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.

I have said for a long time that I thought the president would be best served if the attorney general resigned so I think it's the right thing to do.

Presidents, whether things are good or bad, get the blame. I understand that.

In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual's responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician's responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm. Michael Ignatieff, a former professor at Harvard and contributing writer for the magazine, is a member of Canada's Parliament and deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

The fact of the matter is, we need to have a very clear message. We haven't had that from the current president. And you've seen the violence in his home city of Chicago. This is just another example.

Obama has been the most lawless president we've ever had.

The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas.

Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and Ive got such a bully pulpit!