Quotes by Joe Klein

About Joe Klein:

Joe Klein is an American journalist and columnist. He is the political columnist for Time magazine and is known for his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. In April 2006 he published Politics Lost, a book on what he calls the "pollster–consultant industrial complex." He has also written articles and book reviews for The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life, and Rolling Stone.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

You know that Moses was spinning like crazy in Exodus XIV through XVII when the Jewish people wanted to go back and become a place again because tramping through the desert was a bit too hard.

Joe Klein

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

Joe Klein

When I started in the press there were really ink-stained wretches. Not everybody went to college. Now, everybody at the New York Times and the Washington Post and Salon and Slate, most of them have Ivy League educations.

Joe Klein

When politicians began to see that every last thing that they did in public could be broadcast to a mass audience, the fact that the stakes were so much higher now that every moment became fraught caused them to become more cautious, and the consulta...

Joe Klein

You can't get all of your news from Jon Stewart, especially since it's a comedy show.

Joe Klein

I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy's magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was.

Joe Klein

I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior - out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs - which should not be rewarded. But often it isn't, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of th...

Joe Klein

I'm in favour of politicians having extra-marital relationships. Oh yeah. It makes them more understanding of the flaws that the rest of us have.

Joe Klein

I've been described as a grizzled political veteran.

Joe Klein

Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.

Joe Klein

In 2012 there was a megafoolish, if well-funded, effort by a group called Americans Elect to raise an independent Cincinnatus to run for president via an Internet draft. It flopped, spectacularly.

Joe Klein

In point of fact, 'Simpson-Bowles' has become a symbol, or SimBowl, rather than an actual plan, political shorthand for the process of long-term deficit reduction.

Joe Klein

We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn't be analyzing.

Joe Klein

Ever since John Kennedy, Democrats have had a weakness for dashing younger men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and, I suppose, Jimmy Carter. They balance their tickets with senior statesmen - Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden, Walter Mondale. (Al Gore was...

Joe Klein

This dilettante notion that the global economy is evil because big corporate leaders make too much money... they do make too much money, but the only way we've figured out how to generate wealth in this world is through the market economy.

Joe Klein

I think that if you make a strong statement of principle, even if the folks disagree with you, people will respect you for it.

Joe Klein

I invented the psychological histories and the relationship between Jack and Susan Stanton. I didn't know anything about the Clintons. I don't know more about the Clintons' marriage than you do.

Joe Klein

If there was one fact that sent me hurtling off to write 'Politics Lost,' it was when I learned that John Kerry had focus-grouped Abu Ghraib. We knew about the Justice Department memo in June of 2004, and Kerry didn't raise that in any one of his thr...

Joe Klein

Author Bio

  • NameJoe Klein
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist
  • BornSeptember 7, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship