Ideological Consistency Quotes

One of the wiser clichés of the 20th century stated that if you aren’t a Communist before you are 21, there is something wrong with your heart. If you remain one after you are 21, there is something wrong with your head.

If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.

The more Democrats try to abandon the values and policies embodied in our platform, the more we will continue to lose. We can't win by running on incrementalism.

Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by a political ideology.

People who are willing to stick to a strong pro-life position aren't going to be pushed off a strong anti-tax position. For people who like to think in ideologically cohesive ways, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.

[Commenting on Ronald Reagan:] I don't think he ever thought anything through.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

I'm a free-market economist from years and years back, and I've never veered from that.

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.

I have no problem with saying I am a socialist or with saying I'm a feminist. That's how I was when I was 15, and you know, I haven't grown out of it and probably never will.

I am a liberal. I have always been a liberal.

I don't decide my politics based on the flavour of the month.

I think really that you shouldn't run as a conservative if you're not.

I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant; individual responsibility and community. I do not see those as being mutually inconsistent.

While Zinoviev is in the majority he is for iron discipline.... When he is in the minority... he is against it.

People learn their politics at a young age and tend to stick with it.

I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.

I never perceived a contradiction in the political revolutionary field between the ideas I maintained and the idea of that symbol, that extraordinary figure who had been so familiar to me since I began to reason.

I am half-surprised to find that as I go on I get more and more confirmed in the old advanced Liberal principles, economic, social, and political, with which I entered Parliament 30 years ago.

The biggest issue in this election is something called flip-flopping, and all candidates are accused of doing it. A strong leader is expected to maintain steadfast resolve in his opinion even if the environment changes or he gets new information. In any other context, that would be considered the first sign of a brain tumor. When presidents do it, it's called leadership

I wish to say that we Anarchists have never changed our position. We are Anarchists as of old and still pursue the same ideals.

Mr. Wenger could have moved on to another club, I am sure, but instead chose to stay and build something over the long term. He lives and dies by his own ideas, and Arsenal is his baby.

You were saying that once when visiting Yale, you were struck that unlike Pound, Williams's thinking was volatile, I mean, did not stay locked into a pattern of concepts that then defined his subsequent necessary behavior, whereas Pound did.

The little dictator who went to Moscow in his green fatigues to receive a bear hug did not forsake the doctrine of Lenin when he returned to the West and appeared in a two-piece suit. (On Daniel Ortega Saavedra)

There is nothing inconsistent about having a conservative outlook and being vigorous.