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“I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
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“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
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“The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.”
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“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”
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“Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them”
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“Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.”
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“To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds.”
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“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other peoples' freedom and security.”
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“I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.”
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“Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.”
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“The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.”
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“I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.”
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“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”
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“Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”
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“Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.”
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“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
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“There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.”
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“Industry is the enemy of melancholy”
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“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!”
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“Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.”
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“The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan.”
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“I had much more fun criticizing than praising.”
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“The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.”
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“A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.”
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“[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom."
-William F Buckley”
― God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
-William F Buckley”
― God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
“I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.”
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“I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”
― God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
― God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'
“The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).”
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“I would sooner be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard.”
― Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist
― Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist
“I catch fire and find the reserves of courage and assertiveness to speak up. When that happens I get quite carried away. My blood gets hot my brow wet I become unbearably and unconscionably sarcastic and bellicose I am girded for a total showdown.”
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