David Frum Quotes

There are a lot of wonderful people in America who shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court – and a lot who should be on the court who aren’t such wonderful people.

Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.

Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.

Think tanks do have points of view, and they are absolutely entitled to defend them.

Today‘s Republican party is too beholden to factions generally.

My view on candidates on money is unless it’s proven that the donor stole the money, the campaign keeps the money.

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.

If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?

So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I’ve found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

If you go on TV and say there’s no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.

Events don’t happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies.

America under 30 is a more non-whites place than America over 60. And we know that non-whites and whites vote differently.

I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room – and inside the character‘s heads.

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

The elite isn’t leading anymore. It’s trapped.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.

There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends – and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.