Leon Wieseltier Quotes

The struggle between right and left rips us apart.

Politics generally doesn't mix with sports very well.

I hate movies that tell people what to think. I'm proud that Democrats thought 'Thank You For Smoking' was their film and Republicans thought it was theirs. I'm proud that pro-choice people thought 'Juno' was their film and pro-life people thought it was theirs.

As polarized as we have been, we Americans are locked in a cultural war for the soul of our country.

Political controversies are never entered into with any wish to gain knowledge, but only a triumph for the party.

I don't want to get involved in the culture war. Religion's iffy.

Some call-in moderators are neutral and courteous. Then there's Rush Limbaugh, who is funny and pompous and a scapegoater and hatemonger. His popularity could cause you to draw some terrible conclusions about the state of mind of the American people. It helps to remember that Bill Cosby is popular, too.

In actual fact, I have always been a conservative cross, borne sadly by liberal friends.

When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

I am appalled by the notion of cultural wars.

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

Society is at odds with itself.

I don't have any interest whatsoever in getting back out there and bashing Hillary Clinton.

Throughout my political life, I've not been a stranger to controversy.

Because of my political views, I've been targeted as a lightning rod, someone who's too far out there.

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way.

Our greatest political disease -- the disease of thinking that the community is divided into the relatively rich and the relatively idle, and the laborious poor, and that every social and political controversy can be resolved into the question: What side are you on?

In this country there are two parties: the righteous and the fallacious

All cause groups, left and right, depend on who’s attacking them.

The political tendencies of the various social classes are based on a correct practical instinct.

Pat Buchanan likes to say we're in a culture war. The Civil War was a culture war, and brothers killed brothers. I wonder if they avoided dinner conversation about politics. What if this culture war turned into a real war? I'd look back on that dinner and wish that I'd ordered a side of argument

The Republican Party has more cultural conflicts than the Hapsburg Empire.

It is not Islam the religion that is generating discord. Rather the problem is a deep disagreement among Muslims over the degree to which Islam ought to shape the laws and institutions of society…. the ongoing competition over what constitutes good public order has polarized them, creating vicious enmities that resist compromise.

Populism is an ideology that separates society into two homogeneous and antagonist groups.

Perhaps the reason Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature is that they so frequently conform to type.