Virgil van Dijk Quotes

I kind of have to take pieces of myself to fit what it is that radio wants.

We are not supposed to have an opinion. If we have an opinion, it has to be controversial – that is how we are always projected. It is difficult.

I know I'm not supposed to have any opinions about politics, because I'm famous.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

I've certainly had to bite my tongue on occasion and live to fight another day, so to speak, on certain things. But when you're new and fresh, you come out and think, 'I don't want to screw my chance up, so I'll go along with what everybody else does.'

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Our education gives us the skulls with which to compromise. I worry about the skill to follow our highest ideals.

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

To talk of resisting what is called public opinion as a crime, is to make Socrates an anarchist and Jesus Christ a felon.

Governments almost never act with moral clarity and for very good reason. They are dealing with competing interests.

When you’re in the White House and are asked to defend a policy you do not agree with, you defend the policy.

Once you “volunteer” and engage in self-censorship something happens to your conscience.

I don’t care what the newspapers write about me. My constituents can’t even read. But get rid of those damn pictures [political cartoons]

The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

I don't get all these pop stars who sit on the fence when they're asked for an opinion. People are scared of speaking out. They're too worried about the consequences - like they might lose a few fans if they give a serious opinion.

Change has to come. It's not always what you'd like. It's what other people like.

He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.

No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.

Truth is, I've always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.

A wise politician will never grudge a genuflexion or a rapture if it is expected of him by prevalent opinion.

Partly, I'm worried that no one is saying anything because they are afraid of being seen as politically correct.

The best of us would rather be popular than right.