Molly Ivins Quotes

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Politicians are trapped in their own views.

Who wants to hear that he is wrong when he can be told that he is right? …. We are losing the ability to change our mind because of our media.

If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'

I've been amazed at how fast and herd-like opinions in the United States are.

A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.

Whether you are liberal or conservative, people seem to know the talking points for whatever the issue of the day is. Very rarely does it seem like these are opinions that people are coming up with themselves; it's like they watched the right cable news channel, and now they know what they are supposed to think, and they repeat that.

I'm really not interested in other people's opinions, because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts.

I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the Left lives in.

Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of making accurate moral judgments.

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.

One of the things that really drove me crazy was the way in which college kids, in particular, are educated to think that ideology is dangerous and bad.

People of a certain political view tend to read material of only that point of view … except to cast contempt on the other points of view.

No sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people... it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

From the Moment that Men give themselves wholly up to a Party, they abandon their Reason, and are led Captive by their Passions. The Cause they espouse, presents such bewitching Charms, as dazzle the judgment; and the Side they oppose, such imaginary Deformity, that no Opposition appears too violent; nor any Arts to blacken and ruin it, incapable of a specious Varnish

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

If you only talk to people who agree with you, it’s easy to believe that you’re in the majority.

… the politically engaged will tend also to be the most closed-minded.

When people read 'Breitbart' every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that.

Well, a general danger of punditry is that there's very little incentive to change your position or admit error. If you reverse your position, the people who backed you before will be unhappy, but a lot of the people who now agree with you will still pillory you.

Logic, fact, morality, legality, ideology: All of it is irrelevant in understanding the Party of Trump. Republicans have made crystal clear that nothing matters to them other than partisanship.

I tend to personally judge issue by issue rather than sort of endorsing this football-team mentality that we fall into in this country, where it's all about the team.