David Frum Quotes

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.

Politics are well past logic. It's entertainment.

The problem with us EU politicians is that we approach everything with cool rationality, and then wonder why we don't win people over emotionally.

When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy. When Obama wanted to bomb Syria, he drew our attention to the victims of chemical warfare. And in both of the Iraq wars, politicians said, "Look at the horrific things that are happening." I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.

I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican that I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.

Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions. Bad websites have horrible personalities and instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly. We need to design things-products, websites, services-to convey whatever personality and emotions are desired.

One of the hardest things in politics is to convince people to do things now that will have a good effect 20 or 30 years from now because politicians tend to have a short-term view. They are more attentive to things that people care about today.

How much of what people say in politics is for the moment, meant for the moment, meant only to satisfy an emotional demand or requirement of the moment, but it is not really sincere? My view of people in politics is that most of what they say is not sincere during campaigns about other Republicans.

Donald Trump reflects a distorted view of the American people and what this country is all about.

Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.

Sam Seaborn is the best character that's ever been written for me, certainly. By far. And it's a timeless show [The West Wing], one that's having another resurgence now, with people so in an uproar politically.

I think it's terribly important that networks of anarchists establish themselves with a view toward educating people.

Kind of the bottom line for me, I don't think people come to the church where I preach to hear my view on politics.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

I am going to work with people who hold similar views to me inside Congress, outside of Congress to make certain that we come together to stop Trump from doing some of the very ugly things that he has talked about doing.

Leftism hides under an intellectual veneer, but underneath it is all emotion

I think that Donald Trump picked on people's fears, their anxieties and he gave them somebody to blame, and some folks just really turned out for him for that.

The interesting artists I know are the ones doing political work. The most interesting people I know are the people who care about politics.

What I hear from people out there is they always say that [Donald Trump] doesn't like us. And so they're energized.

Some people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God's on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.

So you [Nicholas Kristof] have got this new column out, 12 steps for people who say are traumatized by the [ Donald Trump] election.

I still think that it's time for something that reflects the American people.

[Donald] Trump has said that I would like to sit down and talk to people, work things out. Well, guess what? Some of the evidence is that was, he went straight to Mexico and sat down and had a conference and a meeting directly with Pea Nieto to go over all this. OK, that.

I learned to have the patience to listen when people put forward their views, even if I think those views are wrong. You can't reach a just decision in a dispute unless you listen to both sides.

People often say that Trump "speaks the truth," right? But I think what really is happening is he's become a symbol of the kind of cynicism the American public feels towards politicians. He embodies, and he's mobilizing, that cynicism. Because people have no faith in politics anymore. People actually believe that politics is dead, because it's bought and sold.