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Charles Krauthammer

77 quotes

• “There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: International Herald Tribune (31 October 1990), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), edited by Robert Andrews, p. 711 -->

• “In science, modesty and genius do not coexist well together. (In Washington, modesty and cleverness don’t.) Einstein is perhaps the most famous exception to the rule.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Courage is not a quality one normally associates with mathematicians. Yet it should apply to people who work in their attics in secret for seven years without cease on a problem that has eluded the greatest mathematical minds since first proposed in 1637.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There's something in the Western psyche, especially the Western liberal, pluralistic psyche, that finds it impossible to believe that radical ideologues mean what they say. We didn't believe communists or fascists, and in the early days we found it impossible to believe the Khomeinists. Yet these are people who do believe what they say. Attempts to moderate their behavior invariably fail; these are exercises in our heads. We need a policy of strong opposition to the fundamentalists and of strong support for those Muslims who stand up to them.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview with Charles Krauthammer: America's "Great Success Story", in Middle East Quarterly (December 1994)

• “Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country — and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today’s shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Return of the Primitive", Time magazine (29 January 1996)

• “Israel is different. In Israel the great temptation of modernity — assimilation — simply does not exist. Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity. It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Clinton doctrine" at CNN (29 March 1999)

• “I don't really care what a public figure thinks. I care about what he does. Let God probe his inner heart.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Obsession with self is the motif of our time.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Axis of Petulance" in The Washington Post (1 March 2002)<!-- also [http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer030402.asp "Who Cares What Europeans Think?" at jewishworldreview.com (4 March 2002)

• “The way I see it, dogs had this big meeting, oh, maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting — an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that's when they decided that humans were the up-and-coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Of Dogs and Men", Time magazine (10 June 2003)

• “'Optimism' is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did. […] Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My proposition is this: A vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new — i.e., future — illegal immigration. Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: First a wall — then amnesty" in The Washington Post (7 April 2006)

• “In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, October 19, 2007, "Pelosi’s Armenian Gambit" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, May 30, 2008, "Carbon Chastity: The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “The new Detroit churning out Schumer-mobiles will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, November 28, 2008, "From market economy to political economy" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public -- and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, December 12, 2008, "A democratic Iraq within reach" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. […] For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, January 2, 2009, "Moral clarity in Gaza" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, March 6, 2009, "The Great Non Sequitur: The Sleight of Hand Behind Obama's Agenda" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, March 13, 2009, "Obama's 'Science' Fiction" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, April 2, 2009, "Obama’s Ultimate Agenda" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, April 2, 2009, "Obama’s Ultimate Agenda" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, May 1, 2009, "Torture? No. Except …" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints -- untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated. How could we?”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, July 17, 2009, "The Moon We Left Behind" at washingtonpost.com, July 17, 2009.

• “Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That’s what the law is good at — protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, August 14, 2009, "The Truth About Death Counseling" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Affluent enviros are all for wind farms, until one is proposed that might mar the serenity of a sail from the crew-necked precincts near Nantucket Sound. Then it's clean energy for thee, not for me.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, September 11, 2009, "The Van Jones Matter" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline — or continued ascendancy — is in our hands.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Article, October 19, 2009, "Decline is a Choice" at weeklystandard.com.

• “The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council. It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview with Der Spiegel published on October 26, 2009.

• “In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average. His approval ratings are roughly equal to what the last five presidents' were at the same time in their first term. […] He will not be the great transformer he imagines himself to be. A president like others -- with successes and failures.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview with Der Spiegel published on October 26, 2009.

• “What made Obama unique was that he was the ultimate charismatic politician -- the most unknown stranger ever to achieve the presidency in the United States. No one knew who he was, he came out of nowhere, he had this incredible persona that floated him above the fray, destroyed Hillary, took over the Democratic Party and became president. This is truly unprecedented: A young unknown with no history, no paper trail, no well-known associates, self-created.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview with Der Spiegel published on October 26, 2009.

• “Longevity for a columnist is a simple proposition: once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die, or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, 18 December 2009, An anniversary of sorts at jewishworldreview.com.

• “From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. […] Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management. And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." […] Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, January 1, 2010, "Obama’s dangerous denial" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference between Kennedy's liberalism and Obama's. Kennedy's was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons, Obama's is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat. Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, February 12, 2010, "Closing the New Frontier" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For liberals, the observation that 'the peasants are revolting' is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You "take in" a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy — a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics – in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations – is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it. Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, March 15, 2012, "Obama's oil flimflam" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily […] to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds. You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, May 31, 2012, "Barack Obama: Drone Warrior" at washingtonpost.com.

• “The greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective. Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive. Absurd. We don't credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Column, July 20, 2012, "Did the state make you great? : Virtues Obama discounts" at jewishworldreview.com.

• “I was a Great Society liberal on domestic issues. People ask me, 'How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News?' The answer is, 'I was young once.' End of answer.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From a NewsBusters interview 18 September 2012

• “I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I've heard a lot of arguments, and I'm convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that's a better way to run a society.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: NewsBusters interview 18 September 2012

• “We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”

  Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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