123 Quotes by Joseph Sobran

Legalizing abortion to get government out of the bedroom is like legalizing cannibalism to get government out of the kitchen.

The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.

Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission.

So when the wolf pounces on your lamb, just ignore the pitiful bleating and remind yourself that this is a democracy, where every sheep can freely express its preference for which kind of wolf it wants to be eaten by. Many sheep, perhaps understandably, prefer a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is after all the basic idea of democracy. So far it has worked pretty well. The wolves all agree on that, and they want to spread democracy everywhere.

There can be no such thing as "limited government," because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of power...

Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.

The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That's easy: 100 per cent.

People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.

Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly.