Top 100 Jonah Goldberg Quotes
#1. Today's unions are less Mobbed-up than those of yesteryear to be sure, but they're hardly above tactics that would be considered intimidating and coercive.
Jonah Goldberg
#2. Of course, it's a mystery to me why any American who can't be bothered to pay attention to politics unless Pamela Anderson is discussing it should be welcome in that conversation.
Jonah Goldberg
#3. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.
Jonah Goldberg
#4. Life is too short, and cigars are too expensive, to smoke them for any reason other than enjoyment.
Jonah Goldberg
#5. Let's treat politicians like Twinkies. They have to disclose their ingredients - i.e., where their money is from - but beyond that, let the buyer beware.
Jonah Goldberg
#6. One of the things that really drove me crazy was the way in which college kids, in particular, are educated to think that ideology is dangerous and bad.
Jonah Goldberg
#7. Getting the support of Syria is the moral equivalent of winning the Klan's endorsement - it might be useful but it doesn't necessarily speak well of you.
Jonah Goldberg
#8. John Kerry is a sphincter. Okay, that's a bit juvenile.
Jonah Goldberg
#9. But if the choice is a cool president and 8 or 10 percent unemployment in a declining economy and a country that seems to be going in the wrong direction and structural unemployment for young people at 50 percent, I'd rather have a dorky president who fixed those problems.
Jonah Goldberg
#11. I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.
Jonah Goldberg
#12. I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.
Jonah Goldberg
#13. America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.
Jonah Goldberg
#14. Champions of Liberty get called Fascists by Champions of Statism
Jonah Goldberg
#15. Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.
Jonah Goldberg
#16. The GOP needs to figure out a way to become more appealing to new constituencies.
Jonah Goldberg
#17. Someone once noted that a 'gaffe' in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
Jonah Goldberg
#18. If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Jonah Goldberg
#19. When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.
Jonah Goldberg
#20. Associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents.
Jonah Goldberg
#22. The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day.
Jonah Goldberg
#23. I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans.
Jonah Goldberg
#24. We are a species that must try to impose and find systems - systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.
Jonah Goldberg
#25. If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.
Jonah Goldberg
#26. The decision [to create a theme park called "EuroWorld"] was made by the EU countries in response to their collective realization that no one in Europe has had an innovative idea in well over a century.
Jonah Goldberg
#27. A rising economic tide is bad for people who live off of the poverty of others.
Jonah Goldberg
#28. I like vengeance as much as the next guy, if the next guy likes vengeance a whole lot ...
Jonah Goldberg
#29. But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don't have one.
Jonah Goldberg
#30. Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency. Across the West, this was the most glorious boon of World War I.
Jonah Goldberg
#31. [In] the post-Enlightenment world, science [has] taken the place of magic, miracles, and superstition.
Jonah Goldberg
#32. There is no - let me repeat - no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes.
Jonah Goldberg
#33. We're all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.
Jonah Goldberg
#34. I think as - all in all, it's better to have a cool president than a not cool president.
Jonah Goldberg
#35. Gov. Christie says 'New Jersey First.' State-based Isolationism!
Jonah Goldberg
#36. Everyone understands that [democrat Senator Harry Reid] is deliberately lying. The man reads his lies from prepared texts. You can't read from a script and then claim you misspoke.
Jonah Goldberg
#37. Yes, I know liberals are more empirical because Jonathan Chait says they are, but my empirical studies of liberal empiricism keep spitting out contradictory findings.
Jonah Goldberg
#38. Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.
Jonah Goldberg
#39. The premise of my book is that everyone is a bit ideological to some extent. Everyone comes from a ideological perspective.
Jonah Goldberg
#40. Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government.
Jonah Goldberg
#41. Americans are very smart about the things they care about, and ignorant about the things they don't.
Jonah Goldberg
#42. If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.
Jonah Goldberg
#43. Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism.
Jonah Goldberg
#44. Liberals are Nazis, and Nazis are liberals. And if you don't agree with me, you're a Nazi too.
Jonah Goldberg
#45. You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad.
Jonah Goldberg
#46. Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency.
Jonah Goldberg
#47. If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.
Jonah Goldberg
#48. [C]ontemporary liberalism stands on a foundation of assumptions and ideas integral to the larger fascist movement.
Jonah Goldberg
#49. Social distinctions tend to matter only at your own level and above.
Jonah Goldberg
#50. The progressive notion of the state as a loving, caring parent is becoming a bipartisan affair.
Jonah Goldberg
#51. Every Democrat says he wants to be JFK while insisting that he will do more or less what LBJ did. No Democrat would dream of saying he wanted to emulate Lyndon Johnson, because the myth is what matters most.
Jonah Goldberg
#52. Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.
Jonah Goldberg
#53. It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd." This
Jonah Goldberg
#54. If you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana. But, like Christians in ancient Rome, you can still spot them if you know the signals.
Jonah Goldberg
#55. Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone.
Jonah Goldberg
#56. Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter.
Jonah Goldberg
#57. The truth is France has been the chief Western advocate of normalizing relations with Iraq - one of its largest trading partners - for years, partly because France holds billions in IOUs from Iraq that wouldn't be redeemable by a new regime.
Jonah Goldberg
#58. Bill Maher is anything but an impartial host. He sucks up to Hollywood liberals because A) he needs to get them back on the show, B) he usually agrees with them, and C) they tend to be wildly ignorant.
Jonah Goldberg
#59. I suppose in John Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing a fuss. Okay, that was unfair.
Jonah Goldberg
#60. Facts are mere speed bumps on the road to lefty moral outrage.
Jonah Goldberg
#61. Not reassuring when weathermen say 'Today will be terrible but don't worry it won't be as terrible as tomorrow or Friday.
Jonah Goldberg
#62. Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.
Jonah Goldberg
#63. [A] country without a word to describe its love for what is best within it is a country ill-equipped to defend what is best within it.
Jonah Goldberg
#64. Unlike classical liberalism, which saw the government as a necessary evil, or simply a benign but voluntary social contract for free men to enter into willingly, the belief that the entire society was one organic whole left no room for those who didn't want to behave, let alone "evolve.
Jonah Goldberg
#65. And it's the President of the United States who said he wasn't going to spike the football and all this, we shouldn't gloat about it, running campaign ads, gloating about it and saying the other guy isn't good enough to do the tough things that I did, which I think is, one reprehensible.
Jonah Goldberg
#66. There's nothing within science per se that says medical researchers must not experiment on human subjects; it is the imposition of ethical dogma that constrains the scientist.
Jonah Goldberg
#67. The main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives are honest about it. We're kind of dorks about it. We are kind of like Dungeons and Dragons geeks.
Jonah Goldberg
#68. As a broad generalization, big businesses have no moral objections to being whores. Getting into bed with Uncle Sam is all a question of price, not principle.
Jonah Goldberg
#69. People ask, "Why is there poverty in the world?" It's a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil.
Jonah Goldberg
#70. A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world ...
Jonah Goldberg
#71. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.
Jonah Goldberg
#72. Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he's lecturing us about how America's gone "soft"? Really?
Jonah Goldberg
#73. Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs.
Jonah Goldberg
#74. One upside of the heat. Kind of cool to see a cat pant.
Jonah Goldberg
#75. In crude Marxist terms, liberals have a theory of infallible government that is constantly at war with the reality of life.
Jonah Goldberg
#76. In many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism
the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism
is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism.
Jonah Goldberg
#77. Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.
Jonah Goldberg
#78. Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.
Jonah Goldberg
#79. I don't think twice about picking up my dog's poop, but if another dog's poop is next to it, I think, 'Eww, dog poop!
Jonah Goldberg
#80. Despite what you may have been taught about Indians or Africans or ancient Celts, poor people are terrible stewards of their environment. For instance, if my kid were starving to death, I would happily feed her fresh panda.
Jonah Goldberg
#81. Those who say [Joseph] Padilla should get a civilian trial are essentially saying that if you reject the rules of civilized nations, like those inscribed in the Geneva Convention, you therefore deserve to be treated better, not worse, than those rules require.
Jonah Goldberg
#82. In Europe and America alike, voters increasingly recognize that the benefits of the green revolution aren't worth the costs, particularly when the revolutionaries don't have a clue what they're doing.
Jonah Goldberg
#83. You know those Navy SEALs, they weren't Democrats and Republicans. They were just doing what was best for America. Wouldn't that be a great country if all of you Americans were just like that? You followed orders, you marched in step and you followed my agenda.
Jonah Goldberg
#84. American Progressivism - the moralistic social crusade from which modern liberals proudly claim descent - is in some respects the major source of the fascist ideas applied in Europe by Mussolini and Hitler.
Jonah Goldberg
#85. But it is one of these sort of mythologies about America and its intellectual history, that the right embraced this thing called social Darwinism, when it never did so.
Jonah Goldberg
#86. Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one.
Jonah Goldberg
#87. When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"?
Jonah Goldberg
#88. The village may have replaced "the state," and it in turn may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny.
Jonah Goldberg
#89. And, of course, liberals see no problem with using the government to impose their cultural beliefs on others; they just won't admit that's what they're doing.
Jonah Goldberg
#90. What is more likely? That tomorrow will be called 'Thursday' or that Maxine Waters will play the race card in her ethics investigation?
Jonah Goldberg
#91. If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.
Jonah Goldberg
#92. If you're uncertain when life begins, why not give the unborn the benefit of the doubt and oppose abortion?
Jonah Goldberg
#93. Are you a producer or a looter? If diversity were always and everywhere good we would be clamoring for more midgets in the NBA.
Jonah Goldberg
#94. Public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.
Jonah Goldberg
#95. The Mars Polar Lander cost the average American the price of half a cheeseburger. A human lander would cost the average American more
perhaps even ten cheeseburgers! So be it. That is no great sacrifice.
Jonah Goldberg
#96. There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.
Jonah Goldberg
#97. And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the 'terrible deeds' ... committed 'in the name of Christ.' ...
Jonah Goldberg
#98. I'd like to know why sociologists can't decide whether movie sex and violence has any effect on children, but there's a universal consensus that even a glimpse of a Camel will force children to become lifelong smokers.
Jonah Goldberg
#99. As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths.
Jonah Goldberg
#100. And in the minds of progressives you are free to live anyway you want so long as it's progressive.
Jonah Goldberg
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
