Daniel Bell Quotes

The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

I think America has always been polarized.

Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.

At the heart of all problems lies the politics of the country.

It's about polarization. You're trying to stir up something in your audience.

Lifestyle and livelihood are pivotal moral issues.

Increasingly, politics is not about "who gets what, when, how" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about "the right to life"...It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed...None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.

History is where tensions were.

Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

Our blight is ide­olo­gies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!

I think the experience over the past thousand years is that ideology is poisonous. . . . The world seen through the lens of ideology is a very limited world.

He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.

It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.

The most distressing aspect of the world into which you are going is its indifference to the basic issues, which now, as always, are moral issues.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

It is a moral issue how we are going to treat workers. On these issues, these are moral issues, principled issues, where there aren't compromises.

There are issues of war and peace. And then, there are issues of life and death like this one that are no less morally compelling than war itself.

I used to scream at everybody at the beginning of my career. I'd get really emotional. I'd project all my issues about my parents and safety onto the executives, so every conversation where they gave a note was life or death and you don't love me.

A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize.

War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.

A sense of proportion and humanitarian action are not issues for terrorists. Their aim is that of killing and destroying.

I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly.

A corrupt society is terrible for humanity and great for business.

The one-sided exploitation of existential guilt is thought reform's trump card, and perhaps its most important source of emotional influence over its participants. Revolving around it are issues most decisive to thought reform's outcome.