Ledeen Quotes & Sayings

So be it. God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident. — Michael Ledeen

I think the level of casualties is secondary ... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war ... What we hate is not casualties but losing. — Michael A. Ledeen

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true. — Mark Twain

I want to be alone ... I just want to be alone. — William A. Drake

Then I remembered that I had yet to learn, if I ever was to learn, how strongly people in love could feel. In any event, I was the last person in the world to judge anyone as foolishly impulsive, for this was my own greatest fault. — Madeleine Brent

So your stance on beards is? — Kristen Callihan

They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. — Michael A. Ledeen

China is a civilization pretending to be a nation. — Michael Ledeen

I think Hadley is to Rice as Scowcroft was to Kissinger; not inclined to think or act independently. — Michael Ledeen

Competition is often conflated with capitalism, but they are not at all the same. Capitalism involves private ownership of the means of production and distribution, but the word implies nothing about the way in which privately owned firms do business. Capitalism is perfectly compatible with a society in which a powerful state doles out favors to private monopolies, protects some enterprises from others, or even sets the prices privately owned firms may charge for their products. Indeed, while capitalists tend to praise the virtues of competition, many of them would just as soon avoid it. — Marc Levinson

Fighting back against Iran is difficult and costly. No American president from Carter to Obama has been willing to take it on. — Michael Ledeen

The lowest-hanging fruit in preventative medicine is just to really focus on nutrition. — Peter Thiel

For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation ... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place. — Eric Jerome Dickey

If you're convinced that you face bad options, then by all means take the least bad. — Michael Ledeen

Iranians hate Arabs. They're a fairly well-educated population and they have centuries of experience with self-government. — Michael Ledeen

Like Afghanistan before it, Iraq is only one theater in a regional war. We were attacked by a network of terrorist organizations supported by several countries, of whom the most important were Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. — Michael Ledeen

Powerful dictatorships that make their leaders powerful need to stage wars to get ordinary people to march in lockstep like mindless Nazi robots. That is the road to Greatness. — Michael A. Ledeen

I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy. — Al Sharpton

We are imitating Nature, who is variable; and he who imitates her cannot be blamed. — Michael A. Ledeen

Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader-a dictator-willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures, which few know how, or are willing, to employ.' — Michael A. Ledeen

The 'Axis of Evil' was - and is - very real, as the tyrants of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea knew full well. — Michael Ledeen

The Iranians excel at identifying potential recruits for terrorist attacks, and then recruiting and training them. — Michael Ledeen

The Giver of Existence is Eternally Existent; there is no harm, therefore, in the passing of beings, for the things that are loved continue to exist through the continuance of the One Who gave them existence, the Necessary Existent. — Said Nursi

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is. — Denis Dutton

The intelligence services would probably be in a better position to make an assessment of the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program than Podhoretz or Ledeen. They don't have access to any specific information. So for them to dismiss it has no great value because they have no authority whatsoever on this issue. For them to push forward with their efforts to get a war started between the U.S. and Iran, you certainly cannot say that Iran does not have a nuclear program. If you say that, then the justification for war has basically been eliminated. — Trita Parsi

It's hard not to be in favor of taking down monsters. — Michael Ledeen

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law ... . They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. - Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters, 2002 — Naomi Klein

In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still ... — Michael A. Ledeen

Nor does Apollo keep his bow continually drawn.
[Lat., Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo.] — Horace