Howard Jacobson Quotes

In the business of politics, emotions and productive dissatisfaction with the world in which we live today are gradually being covered up by the minutiae of ordinary life.

I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it.

I would like to be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics. She's a nightmare. The Left's holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton; Lord knows we don't need the first.

Obviously, I'm no fan of the radical left.

It is not the lefty ass-kissers you have to agitate, but the objective left-wing...

I'm a radical, and I always have been.

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

In the United States I have always believed that there was a big difference between Conservative and stupid. Boy is it getting harder to prove that one by the minute.

That's what the right-wing is good at: figuring out the left wing.

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

The problem for the Left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the Right as vile, it has to argue the issues.

Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left.

People of my generation in Portugal fell into the magic potion of political ideas. What was very funny about this revolution was that it did not bring wealth to the Portuguese. But it brought language, ideas. You'd go to the fish market, and all the women who were selling fish would call each other fascist, communist.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Public opinion can become polarized into a bimodal distribution with only a few people in the center and many more lying toward the extremes. But under such circumstances, democracy will probably break down …

We are revolutionists from head to foot; revolutionists we were; revolutionists we are; revolutionists we shall remain until the very end.

I guess we'd better start getting used to the consequences and permit the American liberals to squeak and squeal us to ultimate defeat.

True, the country is divided, but it's not Right and Left. It's Left and Not Left. It is because, for liberals, politics is personal and therefore extremely loud. For the rest of us, we prefer community over calamity.

The settlers, as we know, are the only people in Israel who take the Left seriously. When you read the settlers' publications, you think that the leftists are everywhere: The leftists infiltrate the government, the leftists run the Defense Ministry, the leftists dominate the legal establishment, and the leftists control the media, of course.

I'm used to the Right being singled out by the entertainers.

The Tea Party has definitely increased political involvement, not only among Tea Party members but among people who oppose the Tea Party members. It's been a general stimulus.

The arrogance of the Left always fascinates me.

As a university student and activist, I was attacked from all quarters from the far right to the far left.

I don't believe in populism.

Few Conservatives MPs have taken any pleasure from the witch-hunt against moderate Labour MPs by the hard-Left Momentum group.