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"Sometimes I fantasize about the US head of state as a super-lazy, super-moral libertarian despot and think, 'That would certainly make everything easier, even though I can't think of one person who'd qualify, except maybe Willie Nelson."
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"The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. ['The grass was greener over there']"
"The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent."
"A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts."
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization."
"A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor."
"Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today's New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans. The "political revolution that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15."
"I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse."
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."
Explore more quotes by Chuck Klosterman
"The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism."
"It's just that what's important there is different there than what's important is here. Here, people care that you wrote a book or that you work in the media."
"A whole bunch of months passed and I didn't hear anything and then he emailed and asked if I could do a little piece on POD and Queens of the Stone Age."
"To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before."
"You're trying to find new ideas in people. I always think to myself, what question I am least comfortable asking the person? And then I make sure I ask it early in the interview."
"Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite."
"I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story."
"If you're doing an interview, you need conversational tension. After you talk to them, you're not going to have a relationship with them, they're not going to like you, they're not going to be your friend."
"I grew up on a farm, and we didn't have cable and only limited radio stations, so I wasn't inundated with culture the way people in other parts of the country were. But I was really interested in it."
"In Fargo, they say, well, that's a job. How well do you get paid? For example, for this book I was written about in Entertainment Weekly, and it was kind of cool because my mom asked me if Entertainment Weekly was a magazine or a newspaper."
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