Bill Kristol Quotes

With it adult political audiences abandoned cinemas. In their place appeared a void. That previous political audience migrated to the seats in front of their TV.

Political stories in general are tough. They just don't appeal to as wide an audience.

As a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Washington, I ritually watched the Sunday-morning political talk shows with my family. We parsed and argued and jeered at the screen as national figures delivered careful, poll-tested talking points.

I think that in politics, when people want to discredit a particular position, they say, "Oh, they are liberals," or "They are conservatives; we are centrists." Everybody wants to be a centrist.

I've been criticized because I've had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don't find anything surprising about that. I don't say - I've been careful not to get personal in terms of my criticisms for my comment, but I think the issues are simply too important for the future of the nation for us to operate as though those of us who disagree somehow shouldn't speak out and be heard. I think we need to be heard.

I think that sometimes the Democrats have to run upstream or swim upstream because we've got the Republicans making it out as if we don't care about these things, and we should be able to engage and be willing to engage in the discussion about morality and values.

Political books are so often written from the perspective of the politicians, not from the point of view of the people.

I've always watched the political shows.

I've never bought the argument that people are apathetic about politics.

The Democrats' obsession with scandal is out of touch and decadent. People want substance, not scandal.

Getting a lot more Americans interested in politics is not the same as getting a lot more Americans knowledgeable about the workings of democracy or government. It has brought the worldview associated with sports-talk radio to politics; you’ve got a team and you want that team to win, and the other team is always the worst, and the refs are always unfairly treating your side. Heaven forbid you concede that the other team played a better game.

I think more than anything, that's when I decided politics was on.

I don't read newspapers too much , just because they tend to make me feel I have a political obligation that I think is a distraction from what my political offerings are going to be if I just make my movies.

I think that the candidates who are doing it [not debating] are doing a great disservice to the party. It's a sign of an unhealthy institution.

In terms of media, we did not get the kind of media attention that somebody like a Donald Trump got, because media is not necessarily interested in the issues facing the middle class, more interested in attacks in personality. So I think there were a lot of reasons.

I think that politics in most people's lives expresses itself like that: indirectly, in half thought-out opinions and feelings. And sometimes through a connection with something that is very real. But we don't have the knowledge or language to speak about it.

I think the Senate ought to realize that I have to have about me those in whom I have confidence; and unless they find a real blemish on a man, I do not think they ought to make partisan politics out of appointments to the Cabinet.

every man who takes a part in politics, especially in times when parties run high, must expect to be abused; they must bear it; and their friends must learn to bear it for them.

Howard Dean is a cruel and extremist demagogue. And Howard Dean is as ignorant on John Ashcroft as he is on national security. If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democrat crop, next November's going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker.

The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading.

Most people like reading about what they already know - there is even a public for yesterday's weather.

People are stereotypes, they are caricaturized. It comes from both sides of the political aisle, it comes from the press. It's all about conflict, it's all about personality, and there are huge stakes in the policies that are being debated, and I think there's a hunger amongst a very significant, maybe even a critical mass of Americans, clustered on the left, right, and center, to have an adult conversation about how we're going to solve these problems ... but it's not for the fainthearted.

My support is particularly Bernie Sanders supporters but that's drawn many [Donald] Trump supporters to start with.

I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.

There's certain things like scripted dramas that - they're either topical or such water-cooler moments that I think that they'll be consumed within 48 hours. You don't have to consume them at 9:00 at night, but you want to consume them within the first couple of days so that you can talk to your friends about it.