The mistrust of government that blossomed in the late '60s has become a chronic and in some ways pathological condition. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“No new technology, during the thousand years between gunpowder and the steam engine, was as disruptive as the printing press,” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
I often set two alarm clocks because I'm afraid the first one won't actually make me get up. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
Once a decade, once every eight years, Donald Trump finds some pretext to say I suck and that I'm bad. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“it will require a struggle to try to make America reality-based again.” — Kurt Andersen America Copy Share Image
I think we tend to be kind of ahistorical, and think that life as we are living it in the moment is… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
TED was simply wonderful, an intellectual spa, a 21st-century Chataqua, superb and singular. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“the stories of the supremely successful entrepreneurs obscure the forgotten millions of losers and nincompoops. The fabulous successes seem like proof of… — Kurt Andersen Business Copy Share Image
“We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. It is held in reverence. Some think it the… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The disagreements dividing Protestants from Catholics were about the internal consistency of the magical rules within their common fantasy scheme.” — Kurt Andersen Consistency Copy Share Image
“Acknowledging actual, specific conspiracies makes sense. But reflexive conspiracism can become a bad habit and a misguided way of making sense of… — Kurt Andersen Bad habit Copy Share Image
Anything remotely resembling news media is going to continue to migrate online until very little or none of it is produced on… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“When somebody asked Alexander Hamilton why the Framers hadn’t mentioned God in the Constitution, his answer was deadpan hilarious: “We forgot.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“A MAIN ARGUMENT of this book concerns how so many parts of American life have morphed into forms of entertainment. From 1980… — Kurt Andersen American life Copy Share Image
“Neither side has been aware of it, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been wearing different… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the… — Kurt Andersen Fundamentalists Copy Share Image
“One of the patients at Kellogg’s Seventh-day Adventist sanitarium was C. W. Post, who got the idea there for Grape Nuts, which… — Kurt Andersen Health benefits Copy Share Image
“For Northerners, victory had confirmed they were on God’s side, fortifying their besetting smugness, and their religion resolved more and more into… — Kurt Andersen Religion Copy Share Image
“EVEN PAUL GOODMAN, beloved by young leftists in the 1960s, was flabbergasted by his students in 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he… — Kurt Andersen Education Copy Share Image
“The Republican position is now to oppose even studying climate change as well as any and all proposals to reduce carbon emissions.… — Kurt Andersen Carbon emissions Copy Share Image
“Sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine instructed, basically, Don’t be stupid. “Shall we say, then,” he wrote about Genesis, “there was such… — Kurt Andersen Creation Copy Share Image
I'm comparing Americans to international peers in terms of GDP, educational system - the sort of benchmarks we used to designate a… — Kurt Andersen Americans Copy Share Image
“THE BIG PIECE of secular conventional wisdom about Protestantism has been that it gave a self-righteous oomph to moneymaking and capitalism—hard work… — Kurt Andersen Conventional wisdom Copy Share Image
“So now they would go all the way. Ferociously believing every miracle and myth in an ancient text wasn’t enough. They were… — Kurt Andersen Book of revelation Copy Share Image
“Why did the grown-ups and designated drivers on the left manage to remain more or less in charge of their followers, while… — Kurt Andersen Christianity Copy Share Image
“A kind of unspoken grand bargain was forged between the anti-Establishment and the Establishment. Going forward, individuals would be permitted as never… — Kurt Andersen Capitalists Copy Share Image
“Whether an individual’s conspiracism exists alongside religious faith, psychologically they’re similar: a conspiracy theory can be revised and refined and further confirmed,… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“As he recalled the fervor years later, “by means of systematized effort, large numbers of people of all ages, but especially the… — Kurt Andersen Christianity Copy Share Image
“As I’ve said, there are left-wing believers in nonexistent conspiracies and other fantasies, but they’re not nearly as numerous or influential. During… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Wallowing in nostalgia for a lost Golden Age ruined by meddling liberal outsiders from Washington and New York, previously a white Southern… — Kurt Andersen Black people Copy Share Image
“The problem is that Republicans have purposefully torn down the validating institutions,” says the political journalist Josh Barro, a Republican until 2016.… — Kurt Andersen Democracy Copy Share Image
“IN ADDITION TO having become a distinctly Christian party, the GOP is more than ever America’s self-consciously white party. The nationalization of… — Kurt Andersen Affirmative action Copy Share Image
“Libertarianism used to have a robust left wing as well. Both disliked government. Both were driven by a fantastically nostalgic conviction that… — Kurt Andersen Left wing Copy Share Image
“JONES IS BOTH symptom and cause of how knee-jerk, florid conspiracism has become rampant and normalized in America, a fixture of the… — Kurt Andersen Air force Copy Share Image
“Libertarianism used to have a robust left wing as well. Both disliked government. Both were driven by a fantastically nostalgic conviction that… — Kurt Andersen Left wing Copy Share Image
“Sharia law uses the sacred texts of Islam as the basis for moral behavior, the way Jews are supposed to use the… — Kurt Andersen Christianity Copy Share Image
“Europeans had highly developed regional and national cultures and societies before they bolted on Protestantism. America, on the other hand, was half-created… — Kurt Andersen American exceptionalism Copy Share Image
“Extreme religious and quasi-religious beliefs and practices, Christian and New Age and otherwise, didn’t subside but grew and thrived—and came to seem… — Kurt Andersen Faith Copy Share Image
“major argument of this book is that Americans are not just exceptionally religious but that our dominant religion has become exceptionally literal… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
