Quotes & Sayings About Moderates

Catholics are every bit as diverse as any other sort of voters out there, with conservative Democrats and moderates. — Bob Casey Jr.

The vast majority of Muslims are moderates working for a better future and seeking a peaceful life. — Ahmed Zewail

While their fiscal views aren't mine, the moderates are the last reasonable voice in the current Republican Party. — Eliot Spitzer

US policy of recruiting Syrian "moderates" to fight both ISIS and Assad, Biden said that in Syria the US had found "that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers." Seldom have the real forces at work in creating ISIS and the present crisis in Iraq and Syria been so accurately described. — Patrick Cockburn

All I know is that while I'm asleep, I'm never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories - and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There's only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I've ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there's very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I write about what life was like for typical young women of the sixties - not the type that made headlines, the Hanoi Janes or Angela Davises, but moderates who nonetheless got swept up by history's tides during that turbulent time. All that turmoil lends itself to drama, intrigue, and murder. — Kay Kendall

Fundamentalists of different religions have more in common with each other than they do with the moderates of their own religions. — Mark Thomas

Don't get politics mixed up in this. It's all about money and it makes no difference if the Social Democrats or the moderates appoint the ministers — Stieg Larsson

People of all political persuasions - conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike - need to dedicate themselves once again to preserving the moral foundation of our society. — Tipper Gore

Most people perceive moderates as timid middle-of-the-roaders who can't take a stand. — Rick Bayan

Moderates tend more than ideologues to be other-directed types who respond to external pressure. — Timothy Noah

There is no such thing as a moderate Republican anymore. — Bill Maher

I have long said there are three distinct groups under the GOP's tent: theological warriors, who want to impose their social views on the rest of society; Tea Party zealots, who say with a straight face that they want the government to get out of their Medicare; and remnants of the pro-business moderates. — Eliot Spitzer

Moderates shouldn't be nervous about Newt because he has a vision, he's laid it forward. He's fundamentally leading us in the way that middle class Americans want to go. — Pete Du Pont

Religious moderation, insofar as it represents an attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics, and the building of strong communities. Religious moderates seem to believe that what we need is not radical insight and innovation in these areas but a mere dilution of Iron Age philosophy. — Sam Harris

Independence doesn't - doesn't equate to moderates. Millions of independents are pro-life. Millions of independents believe marriage is between a man and a woman. — Gary Bauer

Latinos are just like everybody else. There are conservatives. There are moderates. There are liberals. — Geraldo Rivera

I am a moderate walker, however I never stroll back. — Abraham Lincoln

Pleasures are enhanced by a moderate indulgence. — Juvenal

My statement to Harris that his book contains much to admire is specious hyperbole. In The End of Faith, Harris rails against religious fundamentalism, which seems obvious, as well as against religious moderates, which seems intolerant. — Nick Flynn

Moderates always seem to deal in hopes rather than in facts. — Ken Follett

Be merciful, moderate, and modest. — Laozi

To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance. — Sam Harris

There are moderates in Israel. There are moderates in Iran, there are moderates in the Republican Party, moderates in the Democratic Party. What we need to do is we need link all of these moderates together and to figure out a way by which this particular coalition can speak to important issues to marginalize the voice of the extremists. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur'an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates. — Mosab Hassan Yousef

As a former Republican, I represent a group of Americans who all too often have no one to speak for them. This group doesn't necessarily have a name. We've been called 'moderates,' but that term can be misleading. — Lincoln Chafee

The religious opponents of Christian conservatives are presented as moderates. — Ronald H. Nash

You can end love more easily than you can moderate it. — Seneca The Elder

All Taleban are moderate. There are two things: extremism ["ifraat", or doing something to excess] and conservatism ["tafreet", or doing something insufficiently]. So in that sense, we are all moderates - taking the middle path. — Mohammed Omar

Many religious moderates have taken the apparent high road of pluralism, asserting the equal validity of all faiths, but in doing so they neglect to notice the irredeemably sectarian truth claims of each. — Sam Harris

My view on Democrats is that they're fascists disguised as liberals, or liberal moderates. You're not allowed to say anything they don't agree with. You're not allowed to do anything. — Glenn Danzig

By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. — Sam Harris

Dewey could only shake his head in wonder at those who insisted on ideological purity and who wanted to purge the party of moderates and liberals. If the Republican Party were only a party of conservatives, Dewey warned, and truly became the party of reaction that yearned to return the nation to "the miscalled 'good old days' of the nineteenth century . . . you can bury the Republican Party as the deadest pigeon in the country. — Scott Farris

There is nothing which continues longer than a moderate fortune; nothing of which one sees sooner the end than a large fortune. — Jean De La Bruyere

There weren't any moderates left in the government of Iran. — Tim Weiner

In success be moderate. — Benjamin Franklin

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. — William Hazlitt

The conservative candidate who ignores moderates is as misguided as the moderate candidate who ignores conservatives. — Mike Lee

The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability. — Paul Valery

I have never said that the terrorists' interpretation of Islam is the accurate or correct one. But I have pointed out that the terrorists portray themselves quite successfully among Muslims as the exponents of true and pure Islam, and moderates have mounted no successful response as yet. — Robert Spencer

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I believe moderates will need to be driven out in order to usher in the progressive era. — Barack Obama

The political system loves the extremes, it doesn't so much show a lot love for the moderates. — Claire McCaskill

We live in a time when moderates are treated worse than extremists, being punished as if they were more fanatical than the actual fanatics. — Orson Scott Card

Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. No doubt an obscure truth of economics is at work here: societies appear to become considerably less productive whenever large numbers of people stop making widgets and begin killing their customers and creditors for heresy. The first thing to observe about the moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written. — Sam Harris

I don't care if they're Republican liberals or Democrat liberals, they're still liberals. They're not 'moderates.' Don't hit me with that. There's no such thing as a moderate. A moderate is just a liberal disguise. — Rush Limbaugh

There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Sometimes the results of a first free election will find the moderates so poorly organized that extreme groups can eke out a victory, as Hamas did when it gained a 44-to-41 percent margin in the Palestinian election of 2006. — Elliott Abrams

Necessity moderates more troubles than reason. — Luc De Clapiers

One thing that I feel very, very strongly is that we talk about Islamic countries, Islamic people, Islamic leaders, as either moderates or extremists. It's almost like there are only two categories of Muslims. And actually, that doesn't show respect. It shows lack of understanding of the diversity of Muslim thought. — David Miliband

Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future. — Sam Harris

Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds
some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists
some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white! — Malcolm X

In the wake of World War II, most Democrats and liberals claimed that if justice could be done and was not, only evil intent could explain the inaction. Most Republicans and conservatives replied scornfully that the vagabonds were simply calling yet again for an equal share of wealth that others had earned. Most moderates, both Democrats and Republicans, admitted that more justice demanded to be done, but they warned that equality, absent the striving and competition that had always characterized American life, might be an attractive dream, but it was not "the" American Dream.
Pursuing the American Dream, 7, 196 — Calvin C. Jillson

Even moderates, they can see in Trump the potential to have logjams broken and things finally get done. This makes some conservatives and some liberals furious, nervous, and me nervous a little bit, because I'm a pretty pure conservative. So that's a potential of his leadership. — Jeff Sessions

In politics, everyone regards themselves as a moderate, because they know some other sumbitch who's twice as crazy as they are. — Timothy B. Tyson

The battleground has been moderates of all faith traditions in all the countries of the world against the radicals of all faith traditions in all parts of the world. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

these ideological cliques form in a government--or any other organization. Subordinates are always chosen for their agreement with the views of their superiors, and the extremists always get to the top and shove the moderates under or out. — H. Beam Piper

The immediate present belongs to the extremists, but the future belongs to the moderates. — Helen Suzman

Let's cooperate and challenge the administration to cooperate with us because within the administration there are also moderates and people who are not fully comfortable with the tendencies that have prevailed in recent times. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Obama and the Democrats are not focused on the moderates. They're focused on getting their base out, and they're trying to expand that base by forming sympathetic, empathetic alliances with the downtrodden, and there are a lot of downtrodden because Obama has made them that way via his policies. — Rush Limbaugh

The vast majority of Malaysians are sensible people; they're moderates, they want peace, they want harmonious race relations at home. They look for national unity. — Najib Razak

Today we're seeing fundamental conflicts within political Islam, with the fundamentalists on the one side and the moderates on the other. Who gains the upper hand means a great deal to the world. — Zalmay Khalilzad

Religion is to democracy as a bridle is to a horse. Religion moderates democracy because it appeals to an authority higher than democracy itself.5 But — Charles J. Chaput

Everything you say,' Geno said rather irritably, 'contradicts itself.'
'Of course it does,' the screech owl rejoined obscurely. 'Otherwise, how would anyone ever keep to the middle of the road? — Felix Salten

Moderates want their faith respected. They don't want faith itself criticized, and yet faith itself is what is bringing us all this - this lunacy. — Sam Harris

I don't think the Republicans would appreciate the comparison, but they're exactly like the Labor Party in England in the 1970s. They're letting their extremists take them straight down. The same thing is going to happen - they had to disappear for a while and when they reinvented themselves they did it with moderates, they did it with Tony Blair. — Evan Thomas

The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamental-
ist" in the Western sense of the word - in that even "moderate"
approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and
inerrant word of the one true God. The difference between funda-
mentalists and moderates - and certainly the difference between all
"extremists" and moderates - is the degree to which they see political
and military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In any
case, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension of
human existence, including politics and law, are now generally called
not "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists. — Sam Harris

For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude. — Joe Klein

Some say while religious fundamentalists betray reason. Moderates betray faith and reason equally. -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion(Documentary) — Sam Harris

You're shooting yourself in the foot if you isolate or disempower the moderates. — Mohamed ElBaradei

He who does not meditate acts as one who never looks into the mirror and so does not bother to put himself in order, since he can be dirty without knowing it. The person who meditates and turns his thoughts to God who is the mirror of the soul, seeks to know his defects and tries to correct them, moderates himself in his impulses and puts his conscience in order. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more. — Claire McCaskill

Tool of Communist agitators ... it's really a joke, isn't it? Because, quite clearly, we are a party of real moderates. It just shows how little they understand. — Helen Suzman

The nomination of Richard Nixon cemented the ascendance of a conservative over a moderate ideology within the Republican Party, a dominance that has only grown more pronounced over the years as the party has continued its move to the right and moderates have dwindled in numbers and influence. I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party as much as it left me. I — Hillary Rodham Clinton

I want to be clear that when I used terms such as "pretense" and "intellectual dishonesty" when we first met, I wasn't casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate's dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I'm not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen. We can't say, "Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interests of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we're going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go ... Don't you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?" However, that's really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. Again, this problem confronts religious moderates everywhere, but it's an excruciating problem for Muslims. — Sam Harris

We need somebody ready to be commander-in-chief on day one, who understands there are no moderates in Iran; they've been killed a long time ago. — Lindsey Graham

There are moderates in Syria who we should be supporting. — John Kasich

Moderate exercise every day will impart strength to the muscles, which without exercise become flabby and enfeebled. — Ellen G. White

What did John Ashcroft say about moderates, he said, quote, there are two things you find in the middle of the road, a moderate and a dead skunk and I don't want to be either, — John Ashcroft

Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world. — Sam Harris

It's the ideology, stupid. Unless the long-term decline of moderates and rise of conservatives is reversed during the next two years, the ideological balance of the electorate in 2012 could look a lot like it did this year. — William Galston

People need to remember we are the governing party because we have diversity of opinion in our party. We're not pure. We have moderates and we have more progressives. — Barack Obama

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate. — Michel De Montaigne

Disagreements are inevitable. There will always be opposing viewpoints and a variety of perspectives on most subjects. Tastes differ as well as preferences. That is why they make vanilla and chocolate and strawberry ice cream, why they build Fords and Chevys, Chryslers and Cadillacs, Hondas and Toyotas. That is why our nation has room for Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals - and moderates. The tension is built into our system. It is what freedom is all about, including religious freedom.
I am fairly firm in my theological convictions, but that doesn't mean you (or anyone) must agree with me. All this explains why we must place so much importance on leaving "wobble room" in our relationships. One's theological persuasion may not bend, but one's involvement with others must. — Charles R. Swindoll