Richard Ben Cramer Quotes

Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves.

Every generation gets the Tiny Tim it deserves.

I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

My father [Pandit Nehru] was a statesman. I'm a political woman. My father was a saint. I'm not.

A politician thinks of the next election; the statesman thinks of the next generation

I grew up in a household where we talked about the state of the world over breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I thought, giving Jeb Bush the benefit of the doubt all these years, that he was sitting, saying, what a numbnut, what an idiot. My brother's a fool. He's listening to these neocons that talked him into this war. Dad would have never done this.

What is constitutional may still be unwise.

The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation.

With so much power, science will inevitably receive strong criticism. It comes with success. It’s entirely appropriate. Take it as a complement. And get over it.

Politics is not a game. It exists to resolve the largest questions of the society.

Legislators don't want to seem anti-science or anti-progress.

One cannot but regret the deliberate absence of every transcendental moral reference in governing the so-called developed society.

George W. Bush has two policy meetings a week. Bill Clinton used to do that every day before breakfast.

Much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.

You can’t start a conversation about public policy by saying it is complex.

Mr. Morse is a scholar and a gentleman—an able man—an accomplished artist—and we should on 99 accounts to support him. But the hundredth forbids it. Somehow or other he has gotten warped in his politics.

The United States doesn't and can't condone torture. And I want to make very clear that that's the view and the policy of the administration, the policy of the president, and that he's made very clear to American personnel that we will not condone torture....Senator, under no circumstances should we or have we condoned torture.

The need to incorporate longer term time scales into our societal choices is very real—and right in the lap of our generation.

I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.

It is foolish to view realism and idealism as incompatible or to consider our power and wealth as encumbered by the demands of justice, morality, and conscience.

While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities, and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them.

The reason Jeb Bush is not doing well is because of his name. He is part of a long establishment Republican family, and this is not going well with the Republican Party.

When my brothers and I were young, my mom, a Democrat, and my dad, a Republican, used to lead freewheeling discussions at our dinner table. The only rule was paying attention when others were talking, and no interrupting.

I was quite young when my dad went into politics but, as it went on, I became self-conscious about it.