Bill Kristol Quotes

Bill Kristol

Profession : Politician

Birth : December 23, 1952

If Romney explains why where we are with Obama is unacceptable, why whither we are tending is even worse - and why his own alternative path forward is superior - then we trust the American people to make the right choice in November.

Bill Kristol

If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline.

Bill Kristol

Power tends to corrupt - so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power.

Bill Kristol

The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society - so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.

Bill Kristol

Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens - so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.

Bill Kristol

No one can change the definition of what behavior is presidential because that definition fundamentally depends on what our form of government requires, not on what one individual prefers.

Bill Kristol

Self-government is an experiment. It could still fail.

Bill Kristol

Immigration policy is a complicated issue. Or perhaps one should say immigration policies are complicated, since we have many different immigration laws and practices which interact in complex ways.

Bill Kristol

I'm choosing not to accept the Trumpification of the GOP as an irreversible fact.

Bill Kristol

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Bill Kristol

Reagan was the most important American political figure of the latter half of the 20th century. No one was more central to his emergence and success than Bill Buckley.

Bill Kristol

The Republican ticket in 2012 was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Whatever again you think of them, that's not a dumbed-down ticket.

Bill Kristol

I don't think Palin really led to Trump. Was this somehow a bit of a precursor or something? I'm willing to say, 'Maybe so.'

Bill Kristol

The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.

Bill Kristol

American history has always had elements of what we now think of as Trumpism - Joe McCarthy, George Wallace, Father Coughlin. It's not as if these things haven't always existed, and they were powerful. The big difference is Trump is president.

Bill Kristol

I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough.

Bill Kristol

I'm absolutist on Trump. He shouldn't be president. We should limit the damage he can do as president. And we should try as hard as we can to prevent him from being renominated or reelected.

Bill Kristol

I'm trying to uphold what was true about conservatism. I consider myself a Reagan conservative.

Bill Kristol

In terms of the conservative movement, I do think it would be foolish to deny that Trump has exposed certain aspects of that movement as less healthy than I thought or hoped.

Bill Kristol

To the credit of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, people have been expelled or marginalized. Pat Buchanan in the '90s. Ron Paul, Rand Paul in the first decade of this century. Bill Buckley famously expelled the Birchers in 1964. It's been a movement that's tried to maintain its boundaries.

Bill Kristol