Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Andrew Sullivan - Page 2

[T]he myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom.

I think a blog to live really has to be probably four or five times a day.

For me, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit have always been my closest friends in this journey.

I've never been a partisan, I've never been a Republican, I've never been a Democrat, ever, which is why I was very frustrated being called a gay Republican when I never attached myself to that.

Not many people sleep with other men and when the other man leaves have a nervous breakdown.

The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

The day of reckoning is not just coming for Saddam Hussein. It's coming for the anti-war movement.

I think sex is completely absurdly demonized in our culture. But in the end, however much sex you want to have, with however many people in how many ways, to be loved and to love is what human beings really want.

My father has been a rock for me every since.

The one man more responsible for destroying the Democratic centrist revival, for throwing away the Clinton legacy, and for suicidally pitching his party to the populist left was Al Gore

[Senator] Kerry [democrat MA] is emerging as the worst of all the viable Democratic candidates. He has the backbone of Clinton and the charm of Gore.

[D]id you really expect fairness on the environmental issue? For a swathe of reporters, this is not a matter of empirical reporting; it's a matter of faith. Bush cannot be pro-environment because he's Bush.

What I love about the Internet and what I try to do on the issues is insist upon the ability to have bad taste if one wants.

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore?

Obama is looking good because he kept his nerve and retained his restraint. That's a tough combo: nerve and restraint. It takes a cold-bloodedness to pull this off, and there are times when ice seems to run through the man's veins.

You just have to keep going. I mean I think our job, my job, is to keep articulating that I exist and that there are lots of people like me exist and we just have no home.

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

The first person I came out to was God. And the first conversation I ever had with anybody was in prayer.

I like the pluralism of modernity; it doesn't threaten me or my faith. And if one's faith is dependent on being reinforced in every aspect of other people's lives, then it is a rather insecure faith, don't you think?

...when a reporter is quoting Sid Blumenthal on president Bush, you know he's scraping the barrel.

[Bush Hating] undermines the good faith necessary for democratic discussion. Which is a large part of what people like Al Franken are all about.

I'm openly gay because I'm a Catholic.

The success of the stock connect program and the increased market volatility means investors are looking for more products to access China markets performance than exchange traded funds, and futures are feeding that rising demand.

It is one of history's great tragedies that American conservatism, born in part in resistance to Soviet torture, should end by endorsing it in America, by Americans.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everybody's gay.

The Tea Party we were told is only about economics; not true. It was always about economics and social issues. They just hid the social issues and now we just see who they really are.

Bush has legitimized a huge expansion of the welfare state, liberalizing immigration, and using force for democratization abroad. All the next Democratic president has to do to finish Bush's hard work is to raise taxes to pay for it all.

I think a lot of people are afraid the truth is in conflict with God. And are unable to let go and let the truth of the world.

It's also one thing to see a celebrity or some kind of character on a TV show being gay. It's a totally different thing when you know your husband... not your husband, but your brother or your friend or the dude you hung out in high school was gay. I mean, that is what changes people's minds, what changes people's minds.

The simple truth is that there isn't a single civil right I would deny to an evangelical Christian. I've defended their freedom of religion, of association, of disassociation, and believe they should be treated with respect. I wouldn't dream of drumming them out of the military, firing them for their faith, tearing up their relationships, or taking their children away from them. The favor, alas, is not returned.

What's great about it is that you see, the great struggle for gay people is that the politics is just not going to work for us.

I think you earn your reputation for honesty and integrity literally hour-by-hour, and taste for that matter.

If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

Some of this is unavailable to the male-female union: there is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman; and again, the lack of children gives gay couples greater freedom. Their failures entail fewer consequences for others. But something of the gay's relationship's necessary honesty, its flexibility, and its equality could undoubtedly help strengthen and inform many heterosexual bonds.

When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves.

I must say that the Katrina response does help me better understand the situation in Iraq. The best bet is that the president doesn't actually know what's happening there, is cocooned from reality, has no one in his high-level staff able to tell him what's actually happening, and has created a culture of denial and loyalty that makes fixing mistakes or holding people accountable all but impossible.

I was also reminded of one of the unique charms of NYC in the summer: vast piles of rotting garbage piled on the sidewalks, with that sweet yet nauseating smell of decomposing groceries sitting in the humid fetid air, and rancid food juices oozing over the sticky sidewalks. With my windows open to counter the stuffiness, I could occasionally catch a whiff of the stench outside. People actually like living in this chaotic, fetid monument to incompetence? Beats me.

I think very few people are gay. I'm a two-percenter myself.

That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up.

I'm gay. I always have been and I always will be, and I'm happy.

It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.

My own view is simply that there are some very basic rules; very simple rules that apply to all writing in a way, which is: don't lie; if you're wrong, correct; do not misrepresent; and try and keep oneself intellectually honest - which means, as a writer, the very difficult task in public of admitting you were wrong.

I think there were two great gay Americans obviously, and that was Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.

All s, like all human beings, get many things wrong. Ronald Reagan's extraordinary achievement as of the U.S. was to succeed in getting the two biggest challenges of his time right: defeating the Soviet Union and reviving the American economy and spirit. Neither of those achievements was inevitable. Both were fiercely opposed at the time. But he persisted; his visionary focus matched only by a gentleness of character and a brilliance of rhetoric.

When Bush says that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few, he forgot to mention that he was one of them.

Here’s why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.

I'm not going to sit around an pretend I'm not thinking things on my blog when I am thinking them and when I'm open to rebuttal.

Homophobia whether internalized or externalized is really fear; it's not hatred, it's fear. It's fear of the truth about ourselves.

I think essentially corrupting institutions in Washington are turning conservatism into something that is really very creepy, but also emotionally and psychically powerful for people.

I believe that there are moments in sex that are so awesome that they actually reflect God.