123 Quotes by Joseph Sobran

By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence..

Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

The real triumph of the state occurs when its subjects refer to it as “we,” like football fans talking about the home team.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.

At the end of a century that has seenthe evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies,the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.

There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.

An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.

I find myself surrounded by teenagers with body-piercing and exposed navels, gabbing on cell phones and listening to hip-hop. Maybe I'm missing something here. But I just don't feel the least bit threatened by immigrants.