Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by William Kristol

My sense from talking to college students is that you have a healthier sense of the diversity of opinions or arguments or analysis about issues. In our day it was just sort of, "Well gee, this is what the news says so that's the way it is." It didn't really get challenged that much.

If Donald Trump behaves well, personally, and morally - I agree with Van [Jones] on this - if he distances - if he disassociates himself from forces that he unfortunately coddled and even fostered a little in this campaign, if he is responsible about the way in which he goes about his policy, initiatives on immigration and ObamaCare, trade and other areas, he has a huge opportunity, because the truth is that a lot of this stuff isn't that - there is a lot that can be done.

And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular.

There are a few things [Donald Trump] has been pretty clear he'll do. A big infrastructure program that he'll get bipartisan support for.

Maybe one thing that has happened is that the claims of non-partisanship of the mainstream media have been a little bit exploded. Mostly I'd say what, if anything has caused the change, are just the obvious technological changes - proliferation of easier access to getting your opinions out and the proliferation of media.

Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.

If you look at the polls - the conservatives are fine.I think there will be a fair amount of enthusiasm, or at least motivation. They very much want to remove President [Barack] Obama.

I've always rebelled a little when people say, 'My Jewish values lead me to really care about the poor.' I know some Christians who care about the poor, too.

I think it's fine that there are five million people who are watching [politics on TV], and obviously I'm happy they are since they're on the air, and there are a couple hundred thousand people reading The Weekly Standard online, and that's great too, but most Americans aren't engaged that intensely, and are much less partisan.

That's always been the case in America; there's been a big spectrum in how much people are interested in American politics.

Going from three TV channels to broadcast TV to cable to talk radio; obviously the online explosion has changed things.

The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.

Of course there are different forms of conservatism. I would say just analytically that the Republican Party is more thoroughly conservative and the Democratic Party is more thoroughly liberal today than has been the case for most of modern history.

Conservatism as an "ism" is always going to be somewhat in tension with a political party.

Fox gets two million viewers a night, and MSNBC gets one. It's four million people, five million people, and 130 million people are going to vote. There are an awful lot of voters, and an awful lot of politically engaged, intelligent people who are not hanging on whatever happens on Bill O'Reilly or Rachel Maddow.

Yuppies don't have loyalty. They have useful relationships and meaningful encounters.

I don't think you want political parties that are entirely driven by some extremely doctrinal ideology.

At the end of the day,[Mitt] Romney was pro-life, but [Rick] Santorum was more fervently pro-life, and had been for longer. They're all going to repeal Obamacare, but Romney has once endorsed something like it. In the old days, there really were differences on fundamental issues, even on foreign policy, [for which] [Newt] Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum were pretty similar.

Donald Trump beat Jeb Bush and beat Hillary Clinton. And when everyone thinks of Donald Trump that's pretty impressive.

I mean, obviously, one of the strongest arguments against evolution and selection of the fittest and progress, which is part of evolution, is the current field of the presidential candidates. We started off with Washington and Adams and Jefferson and then we had Lincoln, and now we moved ahead and look where we are now.

I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.

The ObamaCare premiums, the numbers started moving away from Hillary Clinton he moment there was a problem with.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower.

Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea.

If we free the people of Iraq, we will be respected in the Arab world... and I think we will be respected around the world.

People read the Tribune or the Sun-Times, you know, way back when the Tribune was a right-wing paper.It's always been somewhat that way. We take 10, 20 years in the 50s and 60s as kind of the norm, when there was this sort of bi-partisan parent consensus.

Iraq's always been very secular.

There's a sort of romanticizing of the past. When you actually think about the past, you know it's a little different.

What's more important than the media, there's this thing called ObamaCare, which was President Obama's signature domestic achievement. It won Republicans the House in 2014 - 2010. It won Republicans the Senate in 2014.

I don't think [Mitt] Romney can sit there and wait to win because perhaps people are disappointed with President [Barack] Obama.

Political parties are complicated coalitions and aren't excessively theoretical.

I still would say generally that more people have access [to] and take advantage of more diversity of opinion than was once .

Republican Congressmen and senators will be in a very interesting place, where they have to support the president-elect - president - what will be President [Donald] Trump when they - when they agree with him, try to guide him in certain ways, I think oppose him on some things.

I think the whole dynamic is different. Whereas in [Barack] Obama's case, even though there was no incumbent, he was able to run against eight years of Bush-Cheney and a Republican Congress, and everyone was tired of everything. He was able to benefit from that.

Some journalists just get too wrapped up in daily news cycles and tempests in a teapot that are not going to make any difference. As someone who is older and has been through a few election cycles, maybe this is just being an old fogey, but I think I know what's going to really matter and what's not.

I am on the whole a defender of the current, despite being a conservative. I mean, I think things are better than when I was younger.

I think there was a moment in the middle part of the century into the 60s, 70s when at least elite journalism claimed to be non-partisan. You can go back and look at it and wonder about how non-partisan it was.

In any case, open-seat presidential elections like 2008 just are different in character from incumbent reelects, and I think that's the most important thing about this election - is that once there's an incumbent running for reelection, most of the debate is about, "Has he [Barack Obama] done a good job?" Most of the judgment is, "Do you want to keep him or do you want to replace him?" Now, the opponent has to also be acceptable and has to make his own case.

Actually, not because of anyone's intention but just because of some sociological and some other things that have happened over 25, 30 years, the parties have sorted themselves out much more ideologically, which has some benefits and some costs.

He has a competent person, I think who will be confirmed as HHS secretary, Congressman Tom Price.

I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.

I was "Never Trump." But it turned out never republican was really the theme of this election.

[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East

White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.

We can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy.

It's been an unusual election [2016].

For all the talk about the bitterness and the partisanship in American politics, is it really that bitter and partisan? Think of American history. Think of Joseph McCarthy. Think of the New Left. Think of [George] McGovern. Think of [Ronald] Reagan. Think of George Wallace. We've had an awful lot of real extremism on both wings.

I think reading intelligent expressions of different points of view is a good thing, and there is a way in which being in academia in a classroom at the University probably gives you, can give you an academic view of things, and reading actual real time debates about what should we do in Syria or the Buffett rule, budget issues...gives you a kind of sense that's hard to get in a classroom.

Tax credits instead of a huge bureaucracy. This is the question for me.

Obviously I think politics is interesting and important and educational.

People used to complain in the 50s and 60s and even in the 70s when I was in school, studying political science, that "if only we could have two political parties that presented a choice, but there were all these liberal Republicans and there were all these southern Democrats who are conservative so people just don't have a clear choice."

[Donald Trump] will try to renegotiate the trade deals a little bit.

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.

[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'.... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons.... We...are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.

Republicans can also point to an alternate path. They can draw upon genuine experts to explain what should be done.

I like [ Rick] Santorum personally and respect him, but you wouldn't say that he was really that strong of an opponent. At the end of the day it wasn't like [Ronald] Reagan running against [George] Bush, or [George W.] Bush against [John] McCain, even. It's sort of surprising that Romney had as much trouble as he did, and I think it shows a weakness in appeal to those voters.

The media claimed to be non-partisan, centrist. It's not been that way for a lot of history.

Frankly, if you're 26 years old and there's a war on women or there's not a war on women, you can get all wrapped up in it and get lots of traffic on your website and get into exchanges and scream and yell about it on MSNBC or Fox, and a week later no one can remember what that was about.