Charles Krauthammer Quotes

Most memorable quotes from Charles Krauthammer.

Charles Krauthammer Famous Quotes

Reading Charles Krauthammer quotes, download and share images of famous quotes by Charles Krauthammer. Righ click to see or save pictures of Charles Krauthammer quotes that you can use as your wallpaper for free.

A three-year diet of rubber chicken and occasional crow.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: A three-year diet of rubber
I'm a former Red Sox fan, now fully rehabilitated.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I'm a former Red Sox
Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase "women and children"?
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Why in the age of
Middleness is the very enemy of the bold.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Middleness is the very enemy
Where there is a confluence of interests among nations, as, for example the swine flu or polio, you can get well functioning international institutions like the World Health Organization. And you can act. Climate change is different, because the science remains hypothetical and the potential costs staggering.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Where there is a confluence
The 2014 election has given the GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. The conventional perception, incessantly repeated by Democrats and the media, is that Washington dysfunction is the work of the Party of No. Expose the real agent of do-nothing. Show that, when Harry Reid can no longer consign House-passed legislation to oblivion, Congress can actually work.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The 2014 election has given
For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.
So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: For the Europeans there really
Identity politics is the mother's milk of the Democratic Left.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Identity politics is the mother's
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 Quotes: In the middle ages, people
I'm not against international institutions that would try to tackle global warming. But the way to go, at least in the short run, is to go to nuclear power. It's amazing to me that people who are so alarmed about global warming are so reluctant to adopt the obvious short-term solution - the bridge until the day when we have affordable renewable energy - of nuclear power.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I'm not against international institutions
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 Quotes: I believe in what I
The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the U.N.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The liberal vision of America
Why should we care about the coup? First, because we depend on Yemen's government to support our drone war against another local menace, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It's not clear if we can even maintain our embassy in Yemen, let alone conduct operations against AQAP. And second, because growing Iranian hegemony is a mortal threat to our allies and interests in the entire Middle East.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Why should we care about
In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: In reality, Kyoto was a
Obama and the Democrats were so critical of what Bush did, the interrogations, the secret prisons, Guantanamo and all of that, and even the war on terror. Obama won't use the word. He's made war on the war on terror.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Obama and the Democrats were
The Internet is a cauldron of anger every day, every year, election year or not, with unemployment at 10 percent or at two percent. It isn't exactly a good index of what's happening.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The Internet is a cauldron
There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: There used to be a
The only reason the president insists on raising [tax] rates is because he knows it will destroy Republican unity, it will cause a complete fracture of the Republican majority in the house, it will hand him a Congress that he can then manipulate for the next two years at least because the Republicans will be neutered ... This is entirely a political action, a way to get a surrender from the Republicans.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The only reason the president
Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking
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 Quotes: An oil crisis looms, prices
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Science has everything to say
The next time you find yourself in the midst of some national hysteria with sensible people losing their heads, with legislatures in panic and with the media buying it all and amplifying it with a kind of megaphone effect, remember this: Remember that a people - even the most sensible people - can all lose their heads at once.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The next time you find
The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains, and advises them. Their slogan - 'God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel' - could have been written in Persian.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The Houthi have local religious
You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: You're betraying your whole life
So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic,
Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair. Arrogance is incorrectly ascribed to what is really the cultural clumsiness of an insular (if continental) people less exposed to foreign ways and languages than most other people on Earth.
True, America as a nation is not very good at humility. But it would be completely unnatural for the dominant military, cultural and technological power on the plant to adopt the demeanor or, say, Liechtenstein. The ensuing criticism is particularly grating when it comes from the likes of the French, British, Spanish, Dutch (there are many others) who just yesterday claimed dominion over every land and people their Captain Cooks ever stumbled upon.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Americans abroad have long been
History is not just cruel. It is witty.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: History is not just cruel.
Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Highfalutin moral principles are impossible
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 Quotes: Courage is not a quality
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 Quotes: In science, modesty and genius
In the liberal remake of 'Casablanca,' the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to 'round up the usual weapons.' It's always the weapon and never the shooter.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: In the liberal remake of
Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Americans are not intrinsically imperial,
refuses to consider
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: refuses to consider
This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends-not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: This is how the great
Historically, multilateralism is a way for weak countries to multiply their power by attaching themselves to stronger ones. But multilateralism imposed on Great Powers, and particularly on a unipolar power, is intended to restrain that power. Which is precisely why France is an ardent multilateralist. But why should America be?
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Historically, multilateralism is a way
Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Doves oppose war on the
Obsession with self is the motif of our time.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Obsession with self is the
Chess: It's like alcohol. It's a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Chess: It's like alcohol. It's
After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba, and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: After the Soviet collapse, Marxism
Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.)
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Third parties in America gravitate
The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The free lunch is the
So far as I'm concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: So far as I'm concerned,
I would write my editorials using a manual typewriter in pitch-black darkness ... I would produce the whole thing without having seen the text.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I would write my editorials
[I]t is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus, while denying it for such matters as choosing your child's school or joining a union.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: [I]t is more than slightly
American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against airstrikes to being heavily in favor that [President Obama] decided to do airstrikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind where he waits for public opinion. And now it's the public who's demanding he do something.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: American public opinion, as you
There's a reason why in New York Harbor we have the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Equality.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: There's a reason why in
Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal - indeed, deeply human - to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision - a creature - of the purest sweetness?
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Some will protest that in
Every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Every week 10,000 tons of
Take away Churchill in 1940...Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Take away Churchill in 1940...Nazism
If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: If we insist that public
Obama is learning very late that, for a superpower, inaction is a form of action. You can abdicate, but you really can't hide. History will find you. It has now found Obama.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Obama is learning very late
The war is not going well and it is time to say why ... It has been fought with half-measures. It has been fought with an eye on the wishes of our 'coalition partners.' It has been fought to assuage the Arab 'street.' It has been fought to satisfy the diplomats rather than the generals ... why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s to carpet-bomb Taliban positions? And why are we giving the Taliban sanctuary in their cities? We could drop leaflets giving civilians 48 hours to evacuate, after which the cities become legitimate military targets.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The war is not going
Loyalty to the President is great, but loyalty to truth, integrity, and country is even better.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Loyalty to the President is
The more settled and ordered one's life - and in particular one's communal life - the easier it becomes for one's imagination to fail.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The more settled and ordered
Take all your dukes and marquesses and earls and viscounts, pack them into one chamber, call it the House of Lords to satisfy their pride and then strip it of all political power. It's a solution so perfectly elegant and preposterous that only the British could have managed it.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Take all your dukes and
The one thing that's always been the center of my political thinking - and it goes back to when I was 19 and editor of my college paper - is an abhorrence of the extreme.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The one thing that's always
Chess enjoys a not wholly undeserved reputation for psychic derangement. It is an endeavor associated, when not with frank madness, with oddness and isolation. I remember a psychiatrist friend visiting me at a chess club in downtown Boston once. He walked in, sat down, looked around and said, 'Jeez, I could run a group here.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Chess enjoys a not wholly
I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I envy people who write
I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I happen to believe that
Ted Cruz is a patriot. He believes in what he does. He's done marvels in mobilizing conservatives, mobilizing Americans concerned about the direction of the ever-expanding entitlement state under Obama, and particularly the threat it is to freedom. I disagree with his tactics, but I agree entirely with his objectives.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Ted Cruz is a patriot.
It is part of the trivialization of politics that we give endless attention to the inner life of the politician - his private thoughts, his inner demons - at the expense of his outer life.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: It is part of the
This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of 'cowards' perpetuating 'senseless acts of violence' is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly vicious warriors and need to be treated as such.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: This is a formidable enemy.
The Iraquis can see it. The Kurds can feel it. The jihadists are counting on it.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The Iraquis can see it.
To go into Ukraine and to take over, to invade Crimea, is a huge step. And [Russian President Vladimir Putin] would only have done it with a president who has shown from the very beginning that [President Obama] is living in a fantasy world ... They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: To go into Ukraine and
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 Quotes: What made Obama unique was
The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The left is entering a
It is ridiculous to sue the president on a Wednesday because he oversteps the law, as he has done a dozen times illegally and unconstitutionally, and then on a Thursday say that he should overstep the law, contradict the law that passed in 2008 and deal with this himself.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: It is ridiculous to sue
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I am not religious. I
Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Clashes of values and the
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 Quotes: For all the sublimity of
If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: If the president signs any
The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The Brady Bill's only effect
Truman left in the middle of an unpopular war, a war of choice. Truman didn't have to go into South Korea. And he was reviled and ridiculed for the stalemate that resulted. Now, he's seen as one of the great presidents of the 20th century.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Truman left in the middle
If you subsidize apples, you get more apples; if you subsidize unemployment, you get more of it.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: If you subsidize apples, you
Know thyself' is a highly overrated piece of wisdom. As for knowing the self of others, forget it. Know what they do and judge them by their works.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Know thyself' is a highly
I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That's the day I showed up for work at 'The New Republic' magazine.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I began my journalistic career
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 Quotes: To his credit, Obama didn't
Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Life and consciousness are the
The conservative idea is not that government has no role. You might have argued that in the thirties when conservatives opposed the New Deal.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The conservative idea is not
The essence of foreign policy, is deciding which son of a bitch to support -in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The essence of foreign policy,
Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Post-Watergate morality, by which anything
What politicians do not understand is that [Ian] Wilmut discovered not so much a technical trick as a new law of nature. We now know that an adult mammalian cell can fire up all the dormant genetic instructions that shut down as it divides and specializes and ages, and thus can become a source of new life. You can outlaw technique; you cannot repeal biology.
Writing after Wilmut's successful cloning of the sheep, Dolly, that research on the cloning of human beings cannot be suppressed.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: What politicians do not understand
Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical - and that doesn't even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Fox News is no monopoly.
...mention chess and most people's eyes glaze over. They think of two old geezers, one of whom has died but no one has noticed, in overstuff armchairs at the Diogenes Club.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: ...mention chess and most people's
In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: In explaining any puzzling Washington
The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The joy of losing consists
I don't really care what a public figure thinks. I care about what he does. Let God probe his inner heart.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I don't really care what
The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The international community lies at
We've had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these earthbound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea's is today.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: We've had exactly five balanced
And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: And who is the hero
The conscious deployment of a double standard directed at the Jewish state and at no other state in the world, the willingness systematically to condemn the Jewish state for things others are not condemned for - this is not a higher standard. It is a discriminatory standard. And discrimination against Jews has a name too. The word for it is antisemitism. Time, February 26, 1990
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The conscious deployment of a
We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie, and rage.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: We must now brace ourselves
There is a mystique about psychiatry that people think that you have some kind of a magical lens, you know, Superman's X-ray vision into the soul. One of the reasons I left psychiatry is that I didn't believe that.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: There is a mystique about
I distrust all multiculturalism, liberal or conservative. The Balkans amply demonstrate the perils of Balkanization.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: I distrust all multiculturalism, liberal
The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: The great divide in American
Medicine--and particularly hospital medicine, which lives in a sea of human suffering--has a way of beating callowness out of even the most self-possessed youth.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Medicine--and particularly hospital medicine, which
Obama's Democrats have become the part of no. Real cuts to federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell no.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Obama's Democrats have become the
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 Quotes: Every two years the American
Guerrilla war is a test of wills. Obama's actual objectives - rollback in Iraq, containment in Syria - are not unreasonable. But they require commitment and determination. In other words, will. You can't just make one speech declaring war, then disappear and go fundraising.
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: Guerrilla war is a test
If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House?
Charles Krauthammer Quotes: If fences don't work, why
Charles Krauthamer John Adams Quotes «
» Charles Kuralt Quotes