Christopher D. Johnston Quotes

Politicians are trapped in their own views.

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

The extremists are talking too loudly, and everyone is convinced that only he is on the right side.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

We don't really have elections; we fight crusades. Each side usually believes that it, and it alone, represents the true faith.

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

People at the political extremes have an advantage over the rest of us. Only they seem to know exactly who and what is wrong with America and precisely what policies and programs should be adopted to fix it.

In college, I was a fiercely committed Democrat - a meeting with Jack Kemp, then Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, challenged my blind partisanship.

The Right-wingers everywhere take themselves too seriously, whether in the U.S. or the U.K. And, by the way, so does the Left. The Left can take itself a little too seriously as well.

Each side had its uninformed fanatics. And each side had political leaders who fanned the flames with their rhetoric.

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

Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

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.

The politicians are not the only people who are in their own silos. Many of our citizens only watch or listen to the news that they want to hear, and if there is anything else, they turn it off. We all need to listen to the people who are on the other side.

I don’t care for ideological people. It’s like those people just want to stop thinking.

My own students say they don't trust anyone who voted for Trump. How can you have a democracy with that?

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

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

Everybody seems to be imprisoned in their own sectarian or political affiliations. They don't seem to be able to rise above these things.

One thing about liberals: It doesn't even occur to them that there is another side to an argument. They are so convinced of the righteousness of their own position that it doesn't dawn on them that a reasonable person might have a different viewpoint.

One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.

I am not a centrist.

We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse.

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.