Ben Miller Quotes

His major flaw may be that he is a prisoner of his own convictions…. He refuses to endorse laws with which he disagrees.

One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.

A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.

I don't compromise my principles for politics.

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

I believe that dogma is often evil.

There are voices in the Republican Party today who preach pragmatism, who champion conciliation, who counsel compromise. I stand here today to reject those deceptions.

The obstinate Man does not hold Opinions; they hold him.

If a practical man digs himself into a hole, he stops digging; if an ideologue digs himself into a hole, he asks for a bigger shovel.

… contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

A system of thought that accepts no inconsistencies is a frightful thing.

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.

It is almost impossible to convince people who are under the influence of ideological bigotry that whose whom they regard as belonging to the enemy species are human.

… some parties think that only the rules laid down by their doctrines are the right ones.

… people reject the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views.

A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.

There’s too much orthodoxy in the political process today.

An ideologue believes that what is right will work. A pragmatist believes that what works is right.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances.