David Frum Quotes & Sayings

Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington. — David Frum

Life, as the signs in the liquor stores say, is too short to drink bad wine. And summer is too short to read bad books. — David Frum

Crown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the throne of Bavaria who commanded the army group facing the British at the Somme, was the senior direct lineal heir of James Stuart, the Old Pretender of 1715. Had there been any Jacobites left in Britain in 1916, they would have had to regard this south German prince as their rightful king. — David Frum

The Great Society went wrong for three major reasons. First, the self-organization the Johnson administration promoted turned out to be not the pooling of family and community resources into shops and businesses, but political pressure for government handouts. Second, the Great Society failed to anticipate the perverse side-effects of handing money out to people who have done nothing to earn it. Third, while the Great Society was showering money on the poor, the Supreme Court was with childlike glee smashing to bits traditional methods of maintaining law and order. — David Frum

More Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined. — David Frum

We've all been wrong- I certainly have- and we should thank those who set us right. Not always fun, but always best in the end. — David Frum

Think tanks do have points of view, and they are absolutely entitled to defend them. — David Frum

There are a lot of wonderful people in America who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court - and a lot who should be on the court who aren't such wonderful people. — David Frum

Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox. — David Frum

One can shape history as much through the facts one omits as through the facts one includes. — David Frum

Anybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is ... to put it mildly ... severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues. We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters. — David Frum

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill. — David Frum

Yet when the hour of decision arrives, it turns out that many conservatives care as little as ever about administrative skill and executive accomplishment. Our party and our movement overwhelmingly respond to symbolic cues. Sarah Palin is exciting and appealing. But what kind of executive is she? None of us have even the remotest idea. — David Frum

A presidential speech is always the work of many hands. — David Frum

Maybe it's true that people with less extreme views who are also interested in public affairs have been driven out by a marketplace that doesn't offer them anything of the tone they want to listen to. — David Frum

Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon. — David Frum

Why be thrifty when your old age and health care are provided for, no matter how profligate you act in your youth? Why be prudent when the state insures your bank deposits, replaces your flooded-out house, buys all the wheat you can grow? ... Why be diligent when half of your earnings are taken from you and given to the idle? — David Frum

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. — David Frum

The ceiling in the mess was very low, not even eight feet. You can feel the weight of the West Wing above your head, and with the the weight of American memory. — David Frum

My view on candidates on money is unless it's proven that the donor stole the money, the campaign keeps the money. — David Frum

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it. — David Frum

Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen. — David Frum

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment. — David Frum

Reagan survived the Iran-Contra scandal because the elements of it that were illegal (aiding anti-communist Nicaraguans) were popular and the things that were unpopular (arming the Iranians) were quite legal. — David Frum

Those who seem to despise half of America will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country's past will not be entrusted with its future. — David Frum

America under 30 is a more non-whites place than America over 60. And we know that non-whites and whites vote differently. — David Frum

Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained. — David Frum

The first decade of the twenty-first century was a crazy bookend to the twentieth, opening with a second Pearl Harbor and ending with a second Great Crash, with a second Vietnam wedged in between. Now we seem caught in the coils of a second Great Depression. — David Frum

An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein - and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans. — David Frum

The Soviet Union was brought down by a strange global coalition of Western European conservatives, Eastern European nationalists, Russian liberals, Chinese communists, and Afghan Islamic reactionaries, to name only a few. Many of these discordant groups disliked the United States intensely. But Americans were able to mobilize them to direct their ire at the Soviet Union first. — David Frum

Today's Republican party is too beholden to factions generally. — David Frum

People who watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events. — David Frum

Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. — David Frum

The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies. — David Frum

The elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped. — David Frum

I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated. — David Frum

[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak. — David Frum

The five million people who watch cable news are the political nation, the people who really care. — David Frum

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital. — David Frum

If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don't usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. — David Frum

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. — David Frum

You've worked hard all your life. You've paid Medicare taxes for almost 30 years. But under the Republican plan, Medicare won't be there for you. Instead of Medicare as it exists now, under the Republican plan you'll get a voucher that will pay as little as half your Medicare costs when you turn 65 - and as little as a quarter in your 80s. And all so that millionaires and billionaires can have a huge tax cut. — David Frum

By abrogating all moral standards in their war against Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders initiated a process of moral collapse that has ended by soaking their own societies in blood. The terror they intended to inflict only upon others has rebounded with a hundred times greater horror upon their own lands. — David Frum

Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex. — David Frum

If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government? — David Frum

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached. — David Frum

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress. — David Frum

[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up, — David Frum

There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions. — David Frum

A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not. — David Frum

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer. — David Frum

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach? — David Frum

So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best. — David Frum

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives. — David Frum

The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). — David Frum

People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment. — David Frum

And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!" The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy. — David Frum

The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens. — David Frum

What I say is I am somebody who cares about conservative ideas. I want to see them implemented in governance. — David Frum

Republicans have to move to a point of greater unity. — David Frum

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads. — David Frum

Anyone who can be cool about his first visit to the Oval Office has lost so much body heat that rigor mortis is probably about to set in. — David Frum

The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party. — David Frum

Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry. — David Frum

Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents. — David Frum

People who want to wage cultural wars ought to keep in mind that cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast. — David Frum

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you. — David Frum

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars. — David Frum

One might almost say, to adapt von Clausewitz, that modern warfare is PR by other means. And war-winning strategies mean that modern armies most stop treating their communications operations as secondary assignments or (as still too often happens) dumping grounds for officers who have failed at everything else - but as missions absolutely essential to success. — David Frum

Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater's apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II
and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation's sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions. — David Frum

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate. — David Frum

The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts. — David Frum