Geoffrey Nunberg Quotes

The presentation of an issue can no longer be controlled.

There is more than two sides. Facts are often apart from what both sides say about each other.

Life is no longer a contest of great minds for great ends, but a pot house squabble.

Political debates, which are considered central to modern American political campaigns, appear useless as they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore are…fake

If you can’t fit your argument on a bumper sticker, you’ve lost the debate.

Accusations fit on a bumper sticker. The truth is longer.

It's unfortunate people can twist and turn things to fit whatever narrative they'd like it to fit.

The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.

Fratricide dominates our public debate, and America is held hostage with tactics of smear and fear.

There is nothing more dangerous than debate in a crowd.

I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

No one is served by continued uncertainty and fractious debate.

Part of politics is redundancy. You’ve got to say the same thing over and over even if you get tired of it…not everyone has heard it.

The explosive political issues of our time are issues of values rather than interests.

It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Part of politics is redundancy. You just have to repeat things sometimes because not everyone has heard your message.

The “cant” of the politician, like the cant of the “religious” man, is also protean in its guise, but its chief method is to explain away words. The politician can always show you that he didn’t mean what he says, but something rather different from what he says. Political cant consists in pretending to agreement with hearers, whoever they may be. This cant is part of the stock-in-trade of every politician, be he Tory, Whig, or Radical, and it is by its means that he tries to haul in stray votes.

If you tell people something often enough, they will believe it.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than illumination.

These Russians [Communists] attach a hell of a lot to ideological theory ... most of them would sooner talk than work, or even eat.

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.