Charles Krauthammer Quotes & Sayings

There's no free lunch. If you want an industrial economy, you need energy. If you want energy, it will produce pollution. You can have it in two forms. You can have it dissipated in the atmosphere - like carbon dioxide - which then you cannot recover, or you can have the waste concentrated in one small space like nuclear. That is far easier to deal with. The idea that you can be able to create renewable energy at a price anywhere near the current price for oil or gas or coal is a fantasy. — Charles Krauthammer

The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism. — Charles Krauthammer

It is an axiom of political life that you never raise expectations, whether in a political or military campaign, because your defeats are then magnified and your victories discounted. — Charles Krauthammer

Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing. — Charles Krauthammer

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

There's a reason why in New York Harbor we have the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Equality. — Charles Krauthammer

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

The U.N. is worse than disaster. The U.N. creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful U.N. Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty and anti-Semitic, among other things. The world would be better off in its absence. — Charles Krauthammer

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

...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

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

Every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza. — Charles Krauthammer

Indeed, the lesson of our history is that the task of merely maintaining strong and sturdy the structures of a constitutional order is unending, the continuing and ceaseless work of every generation. — Charles Krauthammer

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

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. — Charles Krauthammer

Middleness is the very enemy of the bold. — Charles Krauthammer

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's Dhina, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty than ever in human history. — Charles Krauthammer

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor. — Charles Krauthammer

When you have the worst disaster in American history, you've got to be attuned to expectations,. — Charles Krauthammer

As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy - a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence. — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

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

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

The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown. — Charles Krauthammer

I don't know about you, but I lie awake nights worrying about Canadian uranium. I know these people. I grew up there. You have no idea what they're capable of doing. If Sidney Crosby hadn't scored that goal to win the Olympic gold medal, there's no telling what might have ensued. — Charles Krauthammer

History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist. — Charles Krauthammer

Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. — Charles Krauthammer

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats. — Charles Krauthammer

[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

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

Preemption is a kind of pre-deterrence that stops the threat at an earlier, safer stage. — Charles Krauthammer

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

When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Tuesday's victory was big. But it did nothing more than level the playing field and give you a shot. Take it. — Charles Krauthammer

A three-year diet of rubber chicken and occasional crow. — Charles Krauthammer

I would say I see myself as a psychiatrist in remission. — Charles Krauthammer

If [Bush's] successors don't screw it up, within 10 years NASA will have us back to where we belong
on other worlds. — Charles Krauthammer

The most basic parental bond is maternal. Equal parenting is great--it has forced men to get off their duffs--but women, from breast to cradle to cuddle, can nurture in ways that men cannot. — Charles Krauthammer

I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history. — Charles Krauthammer

The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama's previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign. — Charles Krauthammer

Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can't remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection, and sudden death. Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about it being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating? — Charles Krauthammer

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

It doesn't take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe - and now Detroit - is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell, 'Stop.' You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff. — Charles Krauthammer

Pass legislation. When Obama signs, you've shown seriousness and the ability to govern. When he vetoes, you've clarified the differences between party philosophies and prepared the ground for 2016. — Charles Krauthammer

I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy. — Charles Krauthammer

Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase "women and children"? — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission. — Charles Krauthammer

In modern times we suffer not for our sins - sin having been abolished - but for ideology. — Charles Krauthammer

Washington is the only place in the world where a gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth. — Charles Krauthammer

Where religion is trivialized, one is unlikely to find persecution. — Charles Krauthammer

We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie, and rage. — Charles Krauthammer

You can have the most advanced and efflorescent cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933 ... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns. — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented "a substitute" for "true patriotism." Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still. — Charles Krauthammer

Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete. — Charles Krauthammer

I'm a former Red Sox fan, now fully rehabilitated. — Charles Krauthammer

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit. — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store. — Charles Krauthammer

In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average. — Charles Krauthammer

The world is a Hobbesian state of nature in which the struggle for domination is the very essence of international life. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Loyalty to the President is great, but loyalty to truth, integrity, and country is even better. — Charles Krauthammer

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

If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her. — Charles Krauthammer

If you subsidize apples, you get more apples; if you subsidize unemployment, you get more of it. — Charles Krauthammer

The Obama foreign policy, in broad strokes, has been a disaster. — Charles Krauthammer

I'm The Only Entity On Earth, Other Than Rogue States, That Has Received An Apology From The White House — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me. — Charles Krauthammer

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

History is not just cruel. It is witty. — Charles Krauthammer

Obsession with self is the motif of our time. — Charles Krauthammer

Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, meaning Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own--those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.
Limited government so conceived has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy--precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations. — Charles Krauthammer

Winning control of the Senate would allow Republicans to pass a whole range of measures now being held up by Reid, often at the behest of the White House. Make it a major reform agenda. The centerpiece might be tax reform, both corporate and individual. It is needed, popular and doable. Then go for the low-hanging fruit enjoying wide bipartisan support, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and natural gas exports, most especially to Eastern Europe. One could then add border security, energy deregulation and health-care reform that repeals the more onerous Obamacare mandates. — Charles Krauthammer

Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon
my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come? — Charles Krauthammer

Great leaders are willing to retire unloved and unpopular as the price for great exertion. — Charles Krauthammer

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

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

Ted Cruz is not the official spokesman for American conservatism. If you want somebody who has been out there, who has offered an alternative - the person who offered an alternative, for example, is ... Paul Ryan. — Charles Krauthammer

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected. — Charles Krauthammer

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

The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation. — Charles Krauthammer

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

Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence. — Charles Krauthammer