Top 70 John Podhoretz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.”

— John Podhoretz

2. “The sad truth is that you can have peace processes all you like, but if one side is committed to war, then it’s war.”

— John Podhoretz

3. “Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.”

— John Podhoretz

4. “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There’s only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.”

— John Podhoretz

5. “The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel’s existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.”

— John Podhoretz

6. “The presidency is not an entry-level electoral job.”

— John Podhoretz

7. “What people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films – their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil.”

— John Podhoretz

8. “Christopher Nolan’s astounding third Batman feature, ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ represents the true maturation of the superhero movie – and provides the key to understanding the bottomless craving moviegoers have for these films, 34 years after the Christopher Reeve Superman gave birth to the genre.”

— John Podhoretz

9. “The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn’t sound kosher. Because it isn’t.”

— John Podhoretz

10. “The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.”

— John Podhoretz

11. “Here’s a very good rule of thumb in politics: losing begets losing.”

— John Podhoretz

12. “The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.”

— John Podhoretz

13. “Our compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.”

— John Podhoretz

14. “The Middle East Media Research Institute has spent decades detailing the diseased messages emanating from Palestinian TV and textbooks, instructing children in the glories of suicide terrorism against innocent Israelis.”

— John Podhoretz

15. “The great mystery is why robots come off so well in science-fiction films when the human characters are often so astoundingly wooden.”

— John Podhoretz

16. “Robots have a rich and storied history in movies.”

— John Podhoretz

17. “Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America’s leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.”

— John Podhoretz

18. “The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate.”

— John Podhoretz

19. “Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing – and now to something very close to parody.”

— John Podhoretz

20. “For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.”

— John Podhoretz

21. “Your race and gender don’t change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will.”

— John Podhoretz

22. “Many people crave security and stability rather than risk-taking, and that doesn’t make them any less American. They are the workers rather than the job creators, and all societies need both.”

— John Podhoretz

23. “This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.”

— John Podhoretz

24. “I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.”

— John Podhoretz

25. “Is victory sweet because your side wins – or is it really because the other side loses?”

— John Podhoretz

26. “If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right’s deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.”

— John Podhoretz

27. “While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied – and to some extent overshadowed – by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future.”

— John Podhoretz

28. “Romney is a good, intelligent, extraordinarily generous man who put on a great fight. But he didn’t understand the country or the people he sought to lead, and that is why he lost.”

— John Podhoretz

29. “Making recess appointments when the Senate isn’t in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It’s a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.”

— John Podhoretz

30. “All conservatives are bilingual we have to be. We speak both liberal and conservative. But liberals are monolingual – they don’t have to be anything else. They speak liberal, and are completely ignorant of the conservative tongue.”

— John Podhoretz

31. “It has never made any sense to argue that, unique among the people of the world, Arabs are more concerned on a day-to-day basis about the treatment of people they don’t know than they are about how they’re going to put food on their own tables, or whether their sons will ever find a job.”

— John Podhoretz

32. “All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.”

— John Podhoretz

33. “When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight – though whether the insight was conscious or not I don’t know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.”

— John Podhoretz

34. “The thing is, Obama is right that it would be a calamity for the government to default on its debt by not meeting its obligations. Such a thing has never happened and can’t be allowed to happen.”

— John Podhoretz

35. “Obama’s coalition would have consigned him to the political margins as little as 12 years ago, but the nation’s demographic changes are moving far more quickly than most Republicans anticipated.”

— John Podhoretz

36. “Over the next decade, cities and states across America will be compelled to tighten their belts as the really big bills – the pension bills they cannot afford – come due. They’ll have to go after existing contracts with current workers.”

— John Podhoretz

37. “The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now.”

— John Podhoretz

38. “America may be in a dour condition, but it is not going to elect a dour president.”

— John Podhoretz

39. “I don’t feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.”

— John Podhoretz

40. “Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there’s no such thing as a comedian who doesn’t do impressions.”

— John Podhoretz

41. “The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.”

— John Podhoretz

42. “Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.”

— John Podhoretz

43. “Obama’s victory in November 2008 was a historic political accomplishment.”

— John Podhoretz

44. “Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.”

— John Podhoretz

45. “Romney has adopted almost every position conservatives want their candidate to espouse: He’s pro-life, he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he wants to cut taxes and cut the federal budget, and he wants an unapologetic foreign policy dedicated to the proposition that this too will be the American century.”

— John Podhoretz

46. “Romney is right that the Obama vision is too centered on government. But his is too centered on the promotion of business and wealth creation at the expense of everything else.”

— John Podhoretz

47. “Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we’re desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.”

— John Podhoretz

48. “America is great not because it’s a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.”

— John Podhoretz

49. “Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.”

— John Podhoretz

50. “What Obama is saying is simple: The United States has become Too Big To Fail.”

— John Podhoretz