A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.
Irving KristolRead
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
Interpretation
Truth varies based on the audience's understanding and maturity level.
Irving Kristol's quote highlights the idea that truth is subjective and should be tailored to the audience's level of comprehension. It critiques the belief that a universal set of truths can be applied equally to all individuals, emphasizing the importance of context and individual experience in shaping oneβs understanding of truth.
In practice
In a classroom setting to discuss how educational content should vary with student maturity.
A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.
If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.
No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals
The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods
I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.
You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I've read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities I admire in an intellectual, in a writer, and there are so many people who have these things.
The government's not going to create jobs. It doesn't have to. People have to create jobs.
Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that's common to every single one of them. Right?... So it's reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it 'Le Milieu Divin,' but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.
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