210 Quotes by Jonah Goldberg

At the very core of conservatism lies comfort with contradiction, acceptance of the fact that life is not fair; that ideals must forever be goals, not destinations; that the perfect is not the enemy of the good but one standard by which we understand what is good in the first place – though not the only standard.

Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone.

To fret about political, social, or economic inequality in a free society is to fret about the problem of freedom itself, for in the presence of freedom there will always be inequality of some kind.

We are a species that must try to impose and find systems – systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.

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.

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.

Someone once noted that a ‘gaffe’ in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

Debates about economics these days generally enjoy a climate of bipartisan asininity. Democrats want to “rein in” corporations, while Republicans claim to be “pro-business.” The problem is that being “pro-business” is hardly the same thing as being pro–free market, while “reining in” corporations breeds precisely the climate liberals decry as fascistic.

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.