Unbending Principles Quotes

It's quite difficult to get through to the people who are really committed to these anti-progressive beliefs.

Piety is oppressive. It takes all the air out of thought.

I'm not a Gingrich fan. He's just difficult to work with. It's either Newt's way or the highway.

Real integrity stays in place whether the test in adversity or prosperity.

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death. And yes, I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them. The alternative to fanaticism and to death is not some miraculous realization that someone has been wrong and he has to apologize. No, the answer to fanaticism and to death is curiosity and compromise and concession.

There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.

I am not ready to back away from my views.

My first teacher... was extremely strict, mean, and deeply religious.

My mother and father were born and raised in Pakistan, where religion is entrenched in the culture and the culture is explicitly unyielding.

I came from a very strict background.

I have my principles. I'd rather die than change my principles.

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

You could as soon scrub the blackamoor white, as to change the principles of a professed Democrat

Bernie Sanders is making a big and potentially dangerous mistake with his continuing insistence on changes to the Democratic Party's rules and platform. I should know. As chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, I understand too well where such ideological stubbornness can lead.

I still give myself the right to be highly critical of others, though.

I can be pretty harsh and judgmental. I'm a very harsh and judgmental person. I like morals, right and wrong. I like to see things in black-and-white when I can, so I will hold a lot of guys to an impossible standard.

My parents, they were just really strict on things being perfect.

Once is orthodox, twice is puritanical.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

My mother has an incredible rigidity, which is very Catholic.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.