Irving Kristol Quotes

Ideas control the world.

Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.

Power, before it comes from arms or wealth, emanates from ideas.

The ideas dictate everything.

I'm not in power, but my ideas are in power. And my ideas will prevail.

Ideas have consequences.

I don't know if people are born with a worldview or if their thinking is a product of their environment.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.

Everything hangs on one's thinking.

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

Active people don't change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

Ideas shape the course of history.

Ideas have consequences that can transform society.

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

Ideas can never be defeated by military force. They can only be defeated by better ideas.

To an imagination of any scope the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas.

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.

Ideas lead to actions.

I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.

Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction.

Propaganda replaces moral philosophy.

We are smart and powerful enough to change our world as we need.