Peter Beinart Quotes

We Arabs have always been talking about America and the flaws in its democracy. But it’s high time that we talked about our own illnesses.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in this world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.

America's objective today should be to try to make herself the best possible mirror of democracy that she can. The people of the world can see what happens here. They watch us to see what we are going to do and how well we can do it. We are giving them the only possible picture of democracy that we can: the picture as it works in actual practice. This is the only way other peoples can see for themselves how it works; and can determine for themselves whether this thing is good in itself, whether it is better than they have, better than what other political and economic systems offer them.

I can as well use private [commercial] airlines. I am already used to hitchhiking. I must demonstrate to Malawians that we are in this together. I must be the first person to set an example.

Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantee of those practices in our own country.

… democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium..fit for freedom’s athletes… Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least.

No one is perfect. I would never claim to be that person.

We, Americans, have the best country on the planet. We have schools, universities, food, water, energy, peaceful neighbors, low corruption, you name it, deepest and widest capital markets. That doesn't mean we shouldn't identify problems. We don't have a divine right to success.

I make many mistakes. Many mistakes. I'm not a perfect human being. I have to learn from my mistakes. And a lot of the ones I've made have been public. So I always get nervous when people speak about something that sounds like a role model, because I don't know if I've been a great role model myself.

I don't think that one should beat himself or herself over the head if immediately you're not like Jesus Christ or, you know, Gandhi or whoever. But I think the idea is to... to look at those examples and try to... try to operate in a way that every day you live or every interaction you have pushes you further along to operating with that mindset.

I'm human. I make mistakes.

I'm not going to say I'm perfect. I never have.

I am not perfect. I know that. None of us is perfect.

The best critics of America are Americans.

I'm pretty self-aware, and I am an embarrassingly flawed human being in a ton of ways.

I'm human, and I make mistakes.

This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.

I'm not above criticism.

In the future, it will not be the one big message, the one big voice, but millions of us, in our own way, healing, unifying, and experiencing that one defining moment when we recognize that sustaining the democracy is the common bottom line - whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever we are, the call is to sustain the democracy.

If you can't see an example of what you could be, you really aren't going to have that extra incentive to break through any types of barriers.

I think about what I grew up seeing, what I didn't see growing up, and what it felt like when I did see someone who I thought that I could relate to, just living their life on screen.

If we can be the best people we are as individuals, then that's the way to change the world.

I'm totally cool being self-deprecating.

I attempt to do my best and do what's right, but that doesn't mean I'm always right.