42 quotes
I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.
City Journal (1998)
What is the point of restraint and circumspection, if such stream-of-consciousness vulgarity can win not merely wealth and fame but complete social acceptance?
City Journal (1998)
When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.
City Journal (1998)
The victory over cruelty is never final, but, like the maintenance of freedom, requires eternal vigilance.
City Journal (1998)
Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.
City Journal (1998)
In the modern view, unbridled personal freedom is the only good to be pursued; any obstacle to it is a problem to be overcome.
City Journal (1998)
In a democratic age, only the behavior of the authorities is subject to public criticism; that of the people themselves, never.
City Journal (1998)
It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it—in other words, by becoming civilized—that men become fully human.
City Journal (1998)
For intellectuals, everyone’s mind is closed but their own.
City Journal (1998)
Equality is the measure of all things, and bad behavior is less bad if everyone indulges in it.
City Journal (1998)
In the welfare state, experience teaches nothing.
City Journal (1998)
Frivolity without gaiety and earnestness without seriousness—a most unattractive combination.
City Journal (1998)
Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.
City Journal (1998)
It is hard to oppose an ideology with a tradition.
City Journal (1998)
There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.
City Journal (1998)
Mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.
City Journal (1998)
The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction.
City Journal (1998)
Political abstractions can disguise or change the meaning of the most elementary realities.
City Journal (1998)
Where hopes are unrealistic, fears often become exaggerated; where dreams alone are blueprints, nightmares result.
City Journal (1998)
We are like creatures so dazzled with our own technological prowess that we no longer think it necessary to consider the obvious.
City Journal (1998)