Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes

I'm pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don't see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I'm petrified of being wrong.

So I think it's important to communicate with the people in terms of what the real facts are on these proposals and try to have a discussion and a dialogue that gives people information. I think they're hungry for that rather than just political rhetoric.

I try to talk about policy issues intelligently, I try very hard to avoid thought bubbles. I make sure my speeches are well researched and footnoted. I make sure I am not talking through my hat.

There is no way I could discuss things with Jimmy in an intelligent way if I didn’t attend cabinet meetings

Modern presidential debating only started with Richard Nixon and John F.Kennedy in 1960, although the proximity of that to the Lincoln-Douglas centennial is more than accidental. The reason is, I think, the medium. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were talking, but the talking was in terms of logic, development, and reasoning. Television, as a medium, resists those qualities in speaking - it favors quick cuts, one-liners, and talking points. I think the modern debates are largely the prisoners of the televised medium

The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes primitive again.

The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.

The debate corporation is a corporation. It's funded by corporations. It's relayed by media corporations to the public. It's created by the two parties, which are corporations. We should have public presidential debates all over America run by public institutions.

Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.

It is boring to have all the answers. Only political people have answers.

Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.

Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance. -Doc

It's fascinating watching the debates [of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump], with the search for the new president. It's like a car crash, unfolding in front of your eyes. The level of personal attacks!

I’m a Muslim, we come from a Muslim community and we are very critical of western or American foreign policy. So if I’ve got the right and if other Muslims have got the right to criticize… likewise everyone else has also got the right to criticize everything else.

Common sense is not an issue in politics--it's an affliction.

The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].

Over three-quarters of the American people are saying it's time to open up the debates. We have rejected these two candidates [Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump] at the highest levels of disapproval in our history.

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

I get that the media wants us to play theater critics and critique every other proposal. What I'm focusing on are my own policy proposals.

I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people's politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.

You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge.

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

I'm fascinated by politics. I love watching everyone from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Lawrence Krauss to people like Richard Dawkins and Noam Chomsky on YouTube.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.