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 Kristol

It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when mode…

- Irving Kristol

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.

- Irving Kristol

A conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.

- Irving Kristol

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.

- Irving Kristol

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

- Irving Kristol

Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at…

- Irving Kristol

Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

- Irving Kristol

...What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of n…

- Irving Kristol