Top 35 Joe Klein Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Thucydides: “Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”

— Joe Klein

2. “For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.”

— Joe Klein

3. “Political courage requires clarity.”

— Joe Klein

4. “For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude.”

— Joe Klein

5. “I got into journalism because I came of age in the ’60s. It just seemed one way for me to get things done.”

— Joe Klein

6. “Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.”

— Joe Klein

7. “You know, larger than life is always better than smaller than life in politicians. And, you know, God save us from mediocrities.”

— Joe Klein

8. “Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.”

— Joe Klein

9. “What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they’re really like.”

— Joe Klein

10. “We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.”

— Joe Klein

11. “I think that if you make a strong statement of principle, even if the folks disagree with you, people will respect you for it.”

— Joe Klein

12. “Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased.”

— Joe Klein

13. “I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy’s magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was.”

— Joe Klein

14. “Dictating to dictators doesn’t work; they are congenitally delusional about their own indispensability.”

— Joe Klein

15. “Americans who feel the most ignored these days are not the screamers. They are the solid citizens who are sick to death of pols who play to the rant.”

— Joe Klein

16. “The two-war strategy was a product of the cold war, when we had to have the ability to fight the Russians on the plains of Europe and fight the Chinese on the Korean peninsula at the same time. That costs an awful lot of money.”

— Joe Klein

17. “In point of fact, ‘Simpson-Bowles’ has become a symbol, or SimBowl, rather than an actual plan, political shorthand for the process of long-term deficit reduction.”

— Joe Klein

18. “I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior – out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs – which should not be rewarded. But often it isn’t, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of these.”

— Joe Klein

19. “But Reich would eventually arrive at a more nuanced conclusion: “Bill Clinton operated by sonar. He emits a huge number of policies, ideas, and initiatives and he sees what kind if response he gets. And where he sees an opportunity to move, he moves.”

— Joe Klein

20. “Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused.”

— Joe Klein

21. “Faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness.”

— Joe Klein

22. “Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.”

— Joe Klein

23. “For the past several years, I’ve been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life’s exit ramp.”

— Joe Klein

24. “Back in George W. Bush’s second term, when diplomatic realism began to overtake foolish bellicosity, the president developed one of his patented nicknames for the two most powerful neoconservative journalists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer: he called them ‘the Bomber Boys.’”

— Joe Klein

25. “George W. Bush will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel.”

— Joe Klein

26. “You know, larger-than-life politicians have larger-than-life strengths and larger-than-life weaknesses.”

— Joe Klein

27. “I’ve been described as a grizzled political veteran.”

— Joe Klein

28. “You can’t get all of your news from Jon Stewart, especially since it’s a comedy show.”

— Joe Klein

29. “I’m in favour of politicians having extra-marital relationships. Oh yeah. It makes them more understanding of the flaws that the rest of us have.”

— Joe Klein

30. “The Democrats current crudeness is a function of their desperation, and the imminent ratification of Howard Dean, the least charming presidential candidate in recent memory, as their party chairman only serves to punctuate the problem.”

— Joe Klein

31. “Barack Obama’s inspirational whoosh to the presidency in 2008 was unusual. Most campaigns are less exhilarating; indeed, they are downright disappointing – until someone wins.”

— Joe Klein

32. “Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.”

— Joe Klein

33. “We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn’t be analyzing.”

— Joe Klein

34. “Bush the Elder’s stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I’ve ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.”

— Joe Klein

35. “We’re facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.”

— Joe Klein