25 quotes
I will not cede more power to the state.
Up from Liberalism (1959)
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.
I've always subconsciously looked out for the total Christian and when I found him he turned out to be a non-practicing Jew.
Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches (2000)
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984)
More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing.
The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
Windfall : The End of the Affair (1992)
If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign.
Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me.
The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.
Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.
Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.
Up from Liberalism (1959)
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.
I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.
The Book of Positive Quotations (2007)
Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.
We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.
The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)
When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive.
Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word.
We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.
I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, "Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?" I couldn't think of anyone.
[National Review] 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.