Quotes & Sayings About Pundits

Political columnists and sports pundits are rewarded for being overconfident. — Daniel Kahneman

The central thesis of the American failure in Afghanistan - the one you'll hear from politicians and pundits and even scholars - was succinctly propounded by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: 'The war in Iraq drained resources from Afghanistan before things were under control'. — Anand Gopal

The nice thing about political pundits is that, when they answer a question, one no longer understands what they were asked. — Indro Montanelli

Scientists are used to debating with one another about the finer points of new research. But increasingly, they find themselves battling their televisions and computer screens, which transmit ever-more-heated rhetoric from politicians, pundits, and other public figures who misinterpret, misrepresent, and malign scientific results. — Lewis M. Branscomb

Many pundits today are in the habit of misquoting Santayana's epigram, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Maybe some people have come to grief this way, but they are probably fewer than those who have fallen into the opposite error. One is apt to perish in politics from too much memory, Tocqueville wrote somewhere, with equal truth and greater insight. — David Hackett Fischer

Chris Christie won by such a wide margin that pundits say this will give him the impetus he needs to run for president. And he's got a new slogan: 'Put the oval in the Oval Office.' — Jay Leno

All the pundits and D.C. insiders thought I'd never be standing on the main stage. I am and I'm going to stay there. — Carly Fiorina

If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.' — Ben Carson

So everything turns on whether the reported events actually happened. No other religion bases its entire edifice on datable facts. The events it reports either happened or they didn't, but the result is that the gospel creates heralds, not speculative pundits, mystics, and moralists. Jesus Christ does not create a school or a pious community for the spiritually and morally gifted. Rather, he brings a kingdom - the kingdom of God - which casts down the proud and lifts up the downcast. — Michael S. Horton

History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact. — Rick Perlstein

No matter what the shrinks, or the pundits, or the self-help books tell you, when it comes to love, it's luck. — Woody Allen

What the pundits call wishy-washiness, the Bible calls repentance. — David Dark

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from the pundits, in order to make it move. So long as we are
impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self- government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine-man to terrorize over us. — Rabindranath Tagore

My wife and I have just returned from Belgium where, courtesy of the hotel TV, we acquired a new perspective on the Iraq war. The difference between BBC, ITV and CNN on the one hand and the channels from Belgium, Germany and France on the other was stark and disturbing. The 'coalition' output, which strongly influences public opinion in Britain, comprises reports from 'embedded' reporters telling us about the mud and dust, press conferences by generals describing the tip of the iceberg they wanted us to see and studio debates among armchair pundits. — David Walker

When infuriated by an outrageous column, do not be suckered into responding with an abusive e-mail. Pundits so targeted thumb through these red-faced electronic missives with delight, saying 'Hah! Got to 'em.' — William Safire

Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I know the pundits don't agree with me. — Jan Brewer

And this is as good a picture as any of how counterculture communities like the Haight took care of the war's mangled souls: a doctor from a hippie clinic carrying a dying, emaciated soldier in his arms. For decades after the war, up to this very day, right-wing politicians and pundits have spread the libel about how peace activists and hippies greeted returning Vietnam vets with gobs of spit and contempt. — David Talbot

Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs. — Douglas Brinkley

I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators 'the haute couture of language.' — Anna Deavere Smith

Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact — Steven Pinker

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

Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics. — Jim DeMint

This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told, 'You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it. — Anthony Burgess

Pundits are used to analyzing the gap between what our ideals suggest and what our security interests require. — Elliott Abrams

My first big gig was as a correspondent on Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show.' My job was to parody TV reporters and political pundits. As a result, I was often invited onto cable news shows as comic relief. — Beth Littleford

I have been tested. I have beaten breast cancer. I have buried a child. I started as a secretary. I fought my way to the top of corporate America while being called every B word in the book. I fought my way into this election and on to this debate stage while all the political insiders and the pundits told, "it couldn't be done." — Carly Fiorina

a two-word formulation for the miraculous ability of pundits to deduce that a past event had been inevitable: "retrospective clairvoyance. — Clive James

Some pundits have proposed that the aliens have come here to breed with us. Apparently, too much bike riding or something similar has rendered them incapable of reproducing within their own species. But do extraterrestrial infants toddle through your neighborhood? — Seth Shostak

The widespread belief among politicians and pundits is that high test scores are everything. I strongly disagree. What matters most is character. Working hard, treating others with respect and honesty-those are the keys to success. — Hal Urban

Political pundits are under professional obligation to regard the obvious as being too obvious. — P. J. O'Rourke

Pundits talk about 'populist rage' as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. — Elizabeth Warren

I'm climbing into a vehicle that has a powerful influence on our culture. I'd like to make it do something good. The media is populated with attorneys, psychologists and pundits but there are only three physicians: me, Dr. Oz and Sanjay Gupta. We are the only MDs who practice medicine and have board certifications in one or two fields. That's it. — Drew Pinsky

For Trump diehards in a time of danger and disjunction, the media's job was not to challenge, but to affirm. So when demonstrators poured not the streets to protest police killings of Blacks, the media was supposed to confirm for them that those chaos makers were actually supporting the killing of cops, that somehow the Movement for Black Lives was a Black version of the Ku Klux Klan. And some pundits - Hannity, the same O'Reilly who confronted Trump - dutifully filled this role. In their telling, 'Black Lives Matter' was not a call to end state violence against Blacks-and in that way, to end state violence against all-it was evidence of hatred against whites, a premonition of racial apocalypse. — Jeff Chang

I'm being invaded by fashion pundits. — Steven Cojocaru

politicians and pundits tell you what your rights are. Read this book to learn your constitutional rights and together, we can keep the spirit of freedom alive in this great nation. Click here to view this — Sean Patrick

But you know the second month I was here I put out a healthy lifestyles directive. The pundits will say it was because we were sued. Well that's what they say. It was never about that. — Jim Cantalupo

The confusion boys experience about their identity is heightened during adolescence. In many ways the fact that today's boy often has a wider range of emotional expression in early childhood, but if forced to suppress emotional awareness later on makes adolescence all the more stressful for boys. Tragically, were it not for the extreme violence that has erupted among teenage boys throughout our nation, the emotional life of boys would still be ignored. Although therapists tell us that mass media images of male violence and domination teach boys that violence is alluring and satisfying, when individual boys are violent, especially when they murder randomly, pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent. — Bell Hooks

Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren't civil war, they are democracy at work, and that's beautiful. — Sarah Palin

In 2002, a lot of the pundits didn't get the off-year elections right. In 2004, a lot of people thought I was going down eight days before the election. — George W. Bush

Pundits are saying that President Obama is starting to lose support among his own party. To give you an idea of how bad it's gotten, today Jimmy Carter compared him to Jimmy Carter. — Jay Leno

You know, I'm a comedian the same as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. We all came up the same way. The three of us have interest in politics; I call us fundits, we're fundits! We're not pundits! — Joy Behar

Political pundits in Delhi and Islamabad have berated the West for its relativism and double-standards. After all why should Britain have a nuclear arsenal but not India? It is a reasonable question. — Tariq Ali

Defy the pundits again and reach for a high voter turnout that'll shock the establishment. — Bernie Sanders

I know the pundits and the news media have carried a lot of commentary about cameras in the courtroom, and there's a lot of controversy about it as a result of the Simpson case. But I have not had enough time to step back and enough time to evaluate that. — Lance Ito

Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone's attention. A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a tannoy "O people who wait in the shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out. "Honored Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known, the Time of Waiting is over! — Douglas Adams

Where you are born
what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own
stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say. — Jeanette Winterson

One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters. — Walter Isaacson

Nowadays, being "connected" means 24/7 availability. Emailing, texting, Twittering, calling, keeping one's website and Facebook status current seem essential to being and remaining relevant in the world. In addition to the positive impact of globally interconnecting humanity, the information era is also contributing to the creation of a high-tech, low-touch society. It is impacting language, the publishing world, education, and social revolts. Neurologists and other pundits, including Nicholas Carr in his Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", point out the paradoxical downsides of not setting healthy boundaries or applying discipline to how we engage technology. Some have gone so far as to suggest that it is making us "spiritually stupid" by keeping us too distracted to participate in spiritual practices. But how about this: can using technology with mindfulness lead to beneficial social and spiritual connection? — Michael Bernard Beckwith

The pollsters and pundits will keep trying to read voters' minds. — Rick Scott

The military profession, especially is the long-established great powers, is deeply pessimistic about the likelihood that people and countries will behave well under stress. Professional officers are trained to think in terms of emergent threats, and this [climate change] is as big a threat as you are going to find. Never mind what the pundits are telling the public about the perils of climate change; what are the military strategists telling their governments. This will tell us a great deal about the probable shape of the future, although it may not tell any anything that we want to hear. — Gwynne Dyer

The Democrats were crushed in the midterm elections. The Republican juggernaut pounded the Democrats, and the pundits say they will not really know what happened to the Democrats until they find the black box. — David Letterman

People tune in to the Fox News Channel because it was founded on the premise that all sides should be presented fairly. This has upset the 'media establishment' but has made Fox the most powerful name in the news. I'm proud that Hannity & Colmes has contributed to this success, an achievement that has been often dissected by liberal media pundits who argue that Sean is more aggressive than I am and therefore dominates the show. — Alan Colmes

The young adults of the time and their parents and pundits all wrung their hands. But they needn't have. "Those who did best tended to accept change, not to berate themselves for breaking with tradition."41 — Bella DePaulo

There are people who tell you to shut up because you're just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they're every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren't any more qualified than the average man on the street. — Kevin Bacon

Plenty of pundits have really high IQs, but they don't have any discipline in how they look at the world, and so it leads to a lot of bullshit, basically, — Nate Silver

I know there are reporters who ridicule pundits. — Daniel Okrent

Outsourcing isn't the answer to everything. Lots of internet marketing pundits will tell you to outsource, outsource, outsource. Having a trusted team that knows each other and enjoys working together is good, too. — Ian Lurie

Government or politics in America today is big business. Everybody makes money involving themselves in one way or the other, whether it's pollsters, whether they are policy wonks, whether they are pundits, whether they are those who believe that they must call it as they see it and then to be fair about it. — Douglas Wilder

So I make no effort to hide my pain. I don't ever put it all on display like this - but for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will be
magnified a hundred times over, then dissected by the pundits and talking heads. But I'm told it's necessary; the world needs to see me vulnerable and wounded. I cannot appear not to care or to lack remorse, but that removes a crucial component of my self- defense mechanism and leaves me bleeding for all the world to see. I suppose that's rather the point. — Ann Aguirre

What to do when the market goes down? Read the opinions of the investment gurus who are quoted in the WSJ. And, as you read, laugh. We all know that the pundits can't predict short-term market movements. Yet there they are, desperately trying to sound intelligent when they really haven't got a clue. — Jonathan Clements

The only people who don't love apps are pundits who don't understand that apps aren't really in opposition to the open Internet. They're just superior clients to open Internet services. — John Gruber

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation is big on buzz but is not the stunning surprise claimed by many pundits. It is rather a further example of the German theology professor's style that informed his years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his term as pope, and the formation of his legacy to the church. — Eugene Kennedy

The contradictory remarks of politicians are forgotten; the more asinine predictions of pundits are buried with mercy. — Norman Mailer

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen. — Simon Mawer

In today's America He (Jesus) has moved from the central figure of world history to source material for late-night comics and pundits who would not dare treat other religious leaders with such disrespect. — David Jeremiah

You know, the Tea Party is a - first of all, it is a significant movement, and I think the media and some pundits have tried to write it off as a bunch of cranks or something. But, in fact, it's really a very legitimate and fairly significant swath of voters out there. — Mark McKinnon

Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself. — Mimi Kennedy

For years in football I was angry with the game, angry with pundits and, a lot of the time, angry with the journalists writing about me. All that changed when I got my break in movies. — Vinnie Jones

For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning. — John Thorn

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story. — Clint Van Winkle

I'm steeped in the news because I enjoy the news - I like reading papers, I like reading the blogs, I love talking to newsmakers and pundits, for that matter, about their opinions. I'm an information gatherer by nature, so that's what attracted me about this industry. — Megyn Kelly

This has been one of the more comedic aspects of this 72 hours - watching a cavalcade of extremely wealthy pundits, editorialists and political operatives from New York and Washington tell me how rural Americans won't stand for this. — Josh Marshall

Pundits, opponents, and disillusioned supporters would blame Obama for squandering the promise of his administration. Certainly he and his administration made their share of mistakes. But it is hard to think of another president who had to face the kind of guerrilla warfare waged against him almost as soon as he took office. A small number of people with massive resources orchestrated, manipulated, and exploited the economic unrest for their own purposes. They used tax-deductible donations to fund a movement to slash taxes on the rich and cut regulations on their own businesses. While they paid focus groups and seasoned operatives to frame these self-serving policies as matters of dire public interest, they hid their roles behind laws meant to protect the anonymity of philanthropists, leaving more folksy figures like Santelli to carry the message. — Jane Mayer

Like most of us, Joe Biden has had moments when he's led the league in mistakes or verbal gaffes. The difference is his were on a public stage where explanations are almost always made out by pundits to be excuses. — Mike Barnicle

You should expect little or nothing from Wall Street stock pickers who hope to be more accurate than the market in predicting the future of prices. And you should not expect much from pundits making long-term forecasts. — Daniel Kahneman

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

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

Sorting out what's good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, Why? — Thomas Cathcart

When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.' — Louis D. Brandeis

It has been wisely said that you can take a child of God, put him in a dungeon with a Bible and a candle and lock him away, and he will know more about what's going on in today's world with the Word of God than all the pundits in Washington. — Adrian Rogers

Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers
and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception. — Chris Hedges

Well, that's going to be up to the pundits and the people to make up their mind. I'll tell you what is a president for him, for example, talking about my record in the state of Texas. I mean, he's willing to say anything in order to convince people that I haven't had a good record in Texas. — George W. Bush

The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. — Warren Buffett

The progressive movement needs more crazy and amoral/immoral right-wing politicians and pundits like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. — Moby

I feel that what mathematics needs least are pundits who issue prescriptions or guidelines for presumably less enlightened mortals. — Armand Borel

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what "good" or "bad" language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do. — Charles Yang

Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure ... The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. — Walter E. Williams

Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments ... free-market pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do ... and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change. — Jeffrey Sachs

Pundits these days keep jabbering and hooting about the Internet being the greatest advancement. Web this, web that, and let the resident spider suck the life out of you. — Rabih Alameddine

The GOP grows more and more unpopular with female voters seemingly every time one of its leaders gets in front of a microphone. Misogynist is as misogynist does. The GOP and its bloviating pundits don't like women and they are unable to hide it, nor do they seem to make much attempt to do so. — Henry Rollins

Conservatism is constitutionally opposed to public reason, and this explains the abandon with which so many conservative pundits embrace flagrant simulations of reason, constructed through the methods of public relations, and exhibit so little regard for the real thing. — Philip E. Agre

I speak for Kashmiri pundits because injustice has been done to them, and the political discourse doesn't give them enough importance. — Anupam Kher

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads. — Denis Leary

Power and money in evil hands have caused all the miseries of the world so far. Both have devastated poorer countries in particular. There must be checks in the exercise of political and military power, and a ceiling on wealth (of all varieties). Governance in a situation of unequal hold on power and wealth is a sham. The pundits who write and lecture so much on governance should do well to learn this basic concept. — Syed Abdus Samad

In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Isreal was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest. — Ronald Reagan

Cool is spent. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. When advertisers and pundits hoard a word, you know it's time to retire from it. To move on. I want to suggest, therefore, that we begin to avoid cool now. Cool is a trick to get you to buy garments made by sweatshop laborers in Third World countries. Cool is the Triumph of the Will. Cool enables you to step over bodies. Cool enables you to look the other way. Cool makes you functional, eager for routine distraction, passive, doped, stupid. — Rick Moody

The perpetrators of the actual bad stuff that does real and lasting harm to people, like leakage of industrial chemicals into water systems, seem to get not so much as a second glance; the bloviation from media pundits and think tanks creates false problems that waste time and energy debunking. — Henry Rollins

Political pundits are saying President George W. Bush has made gains in two key states: dazed and confused. — David Letterman

I actually don't read most of the coverage about Facebook. I try to learn from getting input from people who use our services directly more than from pundits. — Mark Zuckerberg