Ideological Debate Quotes

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

I'm vey bad at marshaling arguments. I can't, at a dinner party, explain why I'm a socialist and why others should be socialists as well.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Most people in politics draw energy from backslapping and shaking hands and all that. I draw energy from discussing ideas.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

I just don't believe that being conservative means all you do is throw stones and poke people in the eye.

Because of my political views, I've been targeted as a lightning rod, someone who's too far out there.

If you do not like anything in a particular book, then sit and discuss it. Banning a book is not a solution. We have to tackle it ideologically.

Calling Rand Paul 'the most interesting man in politics' is an invitation to an argument - but one we suspect he'd love to have.

At times, conservatives become defined by their volume rather than by their ideas.

I try not to delve too deep into policy.

In 1917, with the Bolsheviks, you had intra-elite conversations about what the country should be doing. You had arguments. Under Stalin, you didn’t really. But then after Stalin, you started having those arguments again.

'Homeland' is great at challenging our preconceived ideas.

Parties from principle, especially abstract, speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs.

Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

The word 'right' should be excluded from political language, as the word 'cause' from the language of philosophy.

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

I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.

Politics is about the persuasion required to move people to judgment.

I don't think I would move into politics, but our job is often about pulling things down. It's about why something won't work, which I think is valuable, but it's not always constructive.

I'm not Michael Moore. I think Michael Moore wants to tell you how to think. He wants to give you answers. I make movies to raise my own personal questions and not to give answers.

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

The more you expose yourself by coming out with specific positions, the more you alienate various groups.