Pundit Quotes & Sayings

There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called 'popular culture' or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant. Some writers try to have this both ways, by making their columns both 'relevant' and 'contemporary' while still manifesting their self-evident superiority. Thus - I paraphrase only slightly - 'Even as we all obsess about Paris Hilton, the people of Darfur continue to die.' A pundit like (say) Bob Herbert would be utterly lost if he could not pull off such an apparently pleasing and brilliant 'irony. — Christopher Hitchens

Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel rather sheepish has reading any answer. The 1950s? The Edwardian era? The real answer, however rarely expressed, seems to be when Island it as a young person. — Robert Lane Greene

The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast. — E.B. White

Andy Gray is a great pundit and a great co-commentator. I couldn't co-commentate for love nor money. I've tried but I just can't do it, so as an all-rounder I'd say Andy's much better than I am. — Alan Hansen

In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive. — Walter Isaacson

Now that I'm a political pundit, I have the ability to influence people. — Jonathan Krohn

But if you could for a time wipe out all the poets and all their poetry from the world, then you would soon discover, by their very absence, where the men of action got their energy from, and who really supplied the life-sap to their harvest-field. It is not those who have plunged deep down into the Pundit's Ocean of Renunciation, nor those who are always clinging to their possessions; it is not those who have become adepts in turning out quantities of work, nor those who are ever telling the dry beads of duty,--it is not these who win at last. But it is those who love, because they live. These truly win, for they truly surrender. They accept pain with all their strength and with all their strength they remove pain. It is they who create, because they know the secret of true joy, which is the secret of detachment. — Rabindranath Tagore

Anyone with an Internet service provider can be a pundit or whatever they want. — Bill Keller

I'm a pundit. I'm, like, paid to be a narcissistic blowhard and be in front of the camera. — David Brooks

Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit. — Ludwig Von Mises

I often find that pundits are quite negative ... not just in tennis, but in sport in general. I just don't like that. Obviously, the job of a pundit is to create interest and a bit of controversy. I get that. Listeners like that. But I do think there's a duty there to promote the sport and talk about how good these people are at what they do. — Andy Murray

I'm an actor who plays an intriguing character, not a political pundit. — Bjorn Borg

Most of the pressure comes from myself, not from others. I don't need a manager or a pundit to put pressure on me. I do all that myself before others do it. — Ruud Van Nistelrooy

If I wanted a circus ringmaster, I'd hire Trump. If I wanted advice on brain surgery or hospital management, I'd turn to Carson. Fiorina would make an articulate television pundit. But for president? — Nicholas Kristof

No account of the history of the Allahabad High Court can ever be
complete without an honourable and detailed reference to Pundit
Kanhaiya Lal Misra and the multifaceted and many splendoured trail
that he has left behind not only in the field of Law but in almost every
other sphere of noble human activity. — Munindra Misra

Anytime I hear about another one of us gone berserk, shooting up his ex's office or drowning her kids to free herself up for her Internet boyfriend, the question I always ask is not, like every other tongue-clucking pundit in the country, how could this have happened? but why doesn't this happen every day? — Tim Kreider

Janeane Garofalo ended up, in a sense, being pushed by the media into becoming a pundit. — Lewis Black

I'm not a policymaker, I'm not a pundit. In fact, I don't have any interest in it. It's not on my agenda. — Rick Warren

He laid into me with the same gusto as a right-wing political pundit on the O'Reilly Factor defending President's Bush right to vacation six days out of the week. — Chelsea Handler

As anyone who has read 'Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin knows, it's quite possible to write an unreadable column without being a TV pundit. But if you want to be a consistently good columnist, you can't be on television. — Stephen Rodrick

I worked in cable news for a long time, but I'm not a pundit. I'm just not. I'm grateful to people that are, but I was really miserable trying to do that. I just wanted to be myself. — Meghan McCain

Stephen A. Smith is the hardest-working man in sports show business. The ubiquitous basketball pundit appears on ESPN about 10 times a day as a regular on the show 'NBA Fastbreak,' a guest commentator on 'Sports Center,' and a pundit on 'ESPNEWS.' — Stephen Rodrick

Every time a congressman or pundit says its 'class warfare' to increase taxes on the wealthy, it's a massive lie. — Adam McKay

I'm not a journalist. I'm a pundit. I'm a commentator, I'm somebody with an opinion. — Karl Rove

It's actually harder than it looks to be a good pundit on the air. You've got to have stuff to say. — Tina Brown

We're obviously in a strange environment where practically anyone can set themselves up as a pundit of sorts. It's all about sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I'm very interested in reading different points of view, and certainly different generations than my own that have such a very different world view. — Hamish Bowles

Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program, it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. — Adam McKay

The top group of fundraisers for Mr. Obama raised $457,834 for his 2008 campaign - and were approved for federal grants and loans of $11.4 billion, according to the Government Accountability Institute. Selling access to the federal treasury has been a great way for Democrats to raise campaign funds. Since 1989, according to an analysis by Gateway Pundit, big donors have provided $416 million more in direct contributions to Democrats than Republicans. — Jack Kelly

You can see the proof in an MRI scan of someone presented with political opinions that conflict with her own. The brain scans of a person shown statements that oppose her political stance show that the highest areas of the cortex, the portions responsible for providing rational thought, get less blood until another statement is presented that confirms her beliefs. Your brain literally begins to shut down when you feel your ideology is threatened. Try it yourself. Watch a pundit you hate for fifteen minutes. Resist the urge to change the channel. Don't complain to the person next to you. Don't get online and rant. Try to let it go. You will find this is excruciatingly difficult. — David McRaney

Gosh, was I wrong. Never listen to a pundit. Is there such a thing as "magnetic back-assward"? We pundits and commentators have had our compass needles pointed in that direction for the past eighteen months. Want a stock tip? I would — P. J. O'Rourke

Sri Yukteswar showed no special consideration to those who happened to be powerful or accomplished; neither did he slight others for their poverty or illiteracy. He would listen respectfully to words of truth from a child, and openly ignore a conceited pundit. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong ... This [is] mostly BS. — Jeffrey A. Miller

I never sought to be a pundit, or on TV, or a writer-it just kind of came to me. If you just keep doing what you want to do, you wind up doing precisely what you want to be doing. Don't resist how life bats you around. — Ann Coulter

I'm not a pundit. I'm not an analyst. — Michael Moore

Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there. — William Safire

I'm not just a pundit - I'm a comedian. — Stephen Colbert

In fact, just heading toward veganism lifts a not insignificant burden from the earth. According to food pundit Michael Pollan, who's not a vegetarian, if everybody did even "Meatless Monday," it would be the environmental equivalent of taking 20 million midsize cars off the road. — Victoria Moran

My dear woman, our greatest problem is
that almost everything is a goddamned code. We do not know what is real any more. Every gesture is symbolic. A man cannot shit short of some pundit finding hidden meaning in it. Even having children is a metaphor. Hence, we cannot trust ourselves; and, therefore, we do not trust anybody. No my dear, I do not believe in codes, and even if I did I certainly would not use one in my sleep! (from the play, Sixteen Words For Water) — Billy Marshall Stoneking

I never wanted to be a pundit. — Robert MacNeil

I'm happy that the GDP is up and unemployment is down. Yay! But I'm not drinking champagne. In fact, I'm hitting alarm buttons everywhere I can. Our once-solid middle class is in mortal danger - in danger and running out of time. Every one of those happy numbers is used by nearly every economic reporter and pundit and politician, but those numbers paper over the fact that America's middle class is literally disappearing. NO — Elizabeth Warren

I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate. — Tony Kushner

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops. — James Wolcott

I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years. — William Safire

I'm not a pundit. I'm not an analyst. I don't want to participate in the existing debate that's going on about whether or not you should be able to have as many guns as you want to have or that guns are even the problem. — Michael Moore

I used to play a narcissistic conservative pundit. Now I'm just a narcissist. — Stephen Colbert

Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day. — William Safire

I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst. I feel no compulsion to be a pundit. — Walter Cronkite

We can never be sure just which other business cards are in the pocket of pundit, politician, or professor. We can't be sure, in short, just who our elites are working for. But we suspect it is not us. — Christopher L. Hayes

Jackson?' 'Sir?' 'What's a pundit?' 'I think it's one of them Indian geezers, sir, as comes up and strangles you from behind.' 'Yes, that sounds very likely. — Desmond Cory