Brian Stelter Quotes

With Donald J. Trump's arrival to power, many feel astonished by the growth of populism. Others analyze with extreme care the decline of companies that measure public opinion. I am saddened to watch the lack of temperament and political stability of those who 'represent' a trend or ideology.

Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can’t govern 300 million people—or 180 million when Kennedy was president—by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric.

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.

Left, right, populism... all are meaningless concepts.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.

People aren't really afraid of my views. They are just afraid of the word 'nationalism.'

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

You see in times of crisis that extremist forces, populist forces, have a better ground to oversimplify things and to manipulate feelings. Feelings of fear.

After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad.

Because I live and work in Washington, D.C., I have a ringside seat at the world capital of The Persuasive Arts, or, as I like to call it, The Opinions Racket.

UKIP trades in the language of fear and division; it seeks power in order to reject responsibility.

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

The greatest weapon in an ideological war is words.

The demagogue ... is a good showman, whether at Nuremberg at a youth conference, or in Georgia at a political barbecue. He knows the tricks of the ham actor, the gestures, the tones of voice that can arouse passions. Always he dresses himself up as the little man come to life, grown to Brobdingnagian stature and become the "Duce" or the "Leader" or, maybe, "Ploughboy Pete.

All politics is a combination of rhetoric and reality.

In a democracy, as a matter of course, every effort is made to seize upon and create publick opinion, which is, substantially, securing power.

Critics intend on changing the balance of public opinion and of political power.

People are very much wrought up about the Communist bugaboo.

Power comes through public persuasion.

There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is.

Hitler and his clique conquered Germany by brutal violence, by murder and crime. But the doctrines of Nazism had got hold of the German mind long before then. Persuasion, not violence, had converted the immense majority of the nation to the tenets of militant nationalism. If Hitler had not succeeded in winning the race for dictatorship, somebody else would have won it.