Dinesh D Souza Quotes & Sayings

What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires - committed to looting and conquest - have done. So that's American exceptionalism: an exceptionalism based on noble ideas, ideas that it holds itself to even when it falls short of them. — Dinesh D'Souza

In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity holds that man, no matter how hard he tries, cannot reach God. Man cannot ascend to God's level because God's level is too high. Therefore there is only one remedy: God must come down to man's level. Scandalous though it may seem, God must, quite literally, become man and assume the burden of man's sins. Christians believe that this was the great sacrifice performed by Christ. If we accept Christ's sacrifice on the basis of faith, we will inherit God's gift of salvation. That's it. That is the essence of Christianity. To some it may seem ridiculously simple. In this simplicity, however, there is considerable depth and richness. — Dinesh D'Souza

Never before has anyone figured out how to rent out American foreign policy, how to convert the position of secretary of state into a personal money machine. Hillary, with Bill's help, figured out not only how to shake down Russian oligarchs and Canadian billionaires by offering them control of America's uranium assets; she also figured out how to rob the island nation of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It's one thing to rip off the world's rich; it takes a special kind of chutzpah to steal from the poorest of the poor. — Dinesh D'Souza

And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a "new man" and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist. — Dinesh D'Souza

I'm a Catholic by background. I was raised in Goa, a part of India that was visited by Portuguese missionaries a few hundred years ago, which explains my last name. — Dinesh D'Souza

A bigot is simply a sociologist without credentials. — Dinesh D'Souza

Freedom is a school of responsibility for human beings. — Dinesh D'Souza

For me, victory isn't measured by winning in the traditional sense. — Dinesh D'Souza

Capitalism satisfied the Christian demand for an institution that channels selfish human desire toward the betterment of society. Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism - it is in human nature. — Dinesh D'Souza

I was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, and my neighbor was Michael Novak, a theologian and philosopher who has written about issues like the morality of capitalism and the Christian roots of free markets. It's possible to be fascinated intellectually with the Christian heritage without being devout. — Dinesh D'Souza

Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich. — Dinesh D'Souza

I think, with Obama and the progressives, you've seen a massive expansion of big government, and it's all based on a moral premise. The moral premise is that wealth is theft. And I don't just mean the wealth of America, I mean, your wealth, my wealth. — Dinesh D'Souza

The Right likes to think that intellectuals and academics like Allan Bloom and Dinesh D'Souza spurred the explosive growth of movement conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was actually mostly Rush Limbaugh. — Alex Pareene

Indeed, several leading figures of the founding period, such as Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Thomas Jefferson, proposed intermarriage between whites and Indians as a way to integrate the natives into the American mainstream. "What they thought impossible with respect to blacks," political scientist Ralph Lerner writes, "was seen as highly desirable with respect to Indians."19 — Dinesh D'Souza

All the criminals do their work on the screen, which people can see. Politicians work behind the screen, which the public can't see.1 - Gang leader Chotta Shakeel, in Suketu Mehta, Maximum City — Dinesh D'Souza

Let us concede at the outset that, in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. Thus we should not be surprised that there is a considerable amount of vice, licentiousness, and vulgarity in a free society. Given the warped timber of humanity, freedom is simply an expression of human flaws and weaknesses. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. — Dinesh D'Souza

The free society does not guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed: it has to be won through personal striving. — Dinesh D'Souza

'War on terror' is a misnomer. It would be like calling America's involvement in World War II a 'war on kamikazism.' Terrorism, like kamikazism, is a tactic. — Dinesh D'Souza

Thus the rigid North-South interpretation of the Civil War conceals - and is intended to conceal - the active complicity of Democrats across the country to save, protect, and even extend the peculiar institution. — Dinesh D'Souza

Tocqueville writes that, for Americans, religion must be regarded as the first of their political institutions. — Dinesh D'Souza

Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history — Dinesh D'Souza

Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ's existence than for any of theirs. — Dinesh D'Souza

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion ... Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too. — Dinesh D'Souza

My wife, Dixie, is evangelical Christian. We met in the Reagan White House, when she was a student intern. We're members of the Horizon Christian Fellowship Church. — Dinesh D'Souza

Let's look at the amounts involved.5 When George W. Bush left office, the federal debt was $9 trillion. That's a huge amount, and Bush added nearly $4 trillion to the total, a disgraceful legacy caused primarily by profligate domestic spending and foreign wars. Bush's second term deficits averaged around $500 billion. But still, the $9 trillion represented America's entire debt accumulated from the founding through 2008. Now, under Obama, the federal debt is $18.5 trillion. It's larger than America's gross domestic product which is around $17 trillion. The debt will be over $19 trillion when Obama leaves office. While progressives professed to be scandalized by Bush's $500 billion deficits, they have remained silent while Obama racks up trillion-dollar deficits. — Dinesh D'Souza

Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much moral and intellectual ground they can concede to the adversaries of Christianity. — Dinesh D'Souza

During the Reagan years the left fretted about "two hundred billion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see." What were annual deficits under Reagan became monthly deficits under Obama. In less than eight years, Obama has doubled the national debt. — Dinesh D'Souza

I want to create the largest archive of great God debates in existence: a Web site that becomes a great resource for both Christians and atheists. — Dinesh D'Souza

Whenever a Gujarati or Sikh businessman comes to a Republican event, it begins with an appeal to Jesus Christ. While the Democrats are really good at making the outsider feel at home, the Republicans make little or no effort. — Dinesh D'Souza

Visiting America in the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville observd that 'the sects that exist in the United States are innumerable,' and yet 'all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God.' Tocqueville termed religion the first of America's political institutions, which means that it had a profoundly public effect in regulating morality and mores throughout the society. And he saw Christianity as countering the powerful human instincts of selfishness and ambition by holding out an ideal of charity and devotion to the welfare of others. — Dinesh D'Souza

The scary thing is a dramatic erosion of American position in the world - its economic, military position, as well as America's influence. Obama is not the man at the wheel desperately trying to conserve American power, influence and wealth. For ideological reasons, he wants the slipping to continue. He's actually the architect of it. — Dinesh D'Souza

Slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many others ever tried to escape. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world; Islam is the second. It's spreading in Asia, Africa, and South America. So the world is in a kind of religious revival, and the atheists are totally flummoxed. They thought they were winning, and now they see that they aren't. — Dinesh D'Souza

If you want to understand what is going on in the White House today, you have to begin with Barack Obama. — Dinesh D'Souza

The paradox of liberal tolerance is that it extends to Marxists, transsexuals, and Islamic radicals, but not to conservatives or Christians. — Dinesh D'Souza

What I say is it's not that Obama hates America. It's not that he's a traitor, that he's a secret Muslim, that he's a Manchurian Candidate. He simply subscribes to an ideology that thinks it would be good for America to have a diminished economy and a diminished role in the world. In other words, Obama is all about what he perceives as global justice. — Dinesh D'Souza

During the 1920s, progressives developed a fascination with and admiration for Italian and German fascism, and the fascists, for their part, praised American progressives. These were likeminded people who spoke the same language, and progressives and fascists worked together to implement programs to sterilize so-called mental defectives and "unfit" people, resulting subsequently in tens of thousands of forced sterilizations in America and hundreds of thousands in Nazi Germany. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity teaches that this life is not the only life, and there is a final judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled. — Dinesh D'Souza

Somewhat more blatant was President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, a wealthy financier and oil trader who faced life in prison for illegally trading with the government of Iran and for evading $48 million in taxes. These crimes got him on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Rich's ex-wife, Denise, had been pressing Clinton for a pardon, but Clinton reportedly said he was having difficulties, even though he was "doing all possible to turn around" the White House counsel on the subject. Rich got his pardon, finally, after Denise Rich gave $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's 2000 New York Senate campaign, $400,000 to the Clinton Library, and another $1 million to the Democratic Party. The — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith. — Dinesh D'Souza

I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat. — Dinesh D'Souza

Young men are obsessed with their dads, and they remain obsessed if the dad is not around. Remember that there was a lot of discussion about how George W. Bush might have invaded Iraq to atone for the failures of his dad. — Dinesh D'Souza

The capitalist has this over the politician and the clergyman; he has in practice done more to raise the standard of living of the poor than all the government and church programs in history ... Monsanto and the Archer Daniels Midland Company have fed more hungry people than all the ... soup kitchens combined. — Dinesh D'Souza

If Obama came by his liberalism in the faculty lounge, then sure, he can see it hasn't worked, and he can modify it. But if Obama got his formative ideas when he was very young, and if they are the result of his traumatic relationship with his father, then they are built into his psyche. — Dinesh D'Souza

Obamacare is a program designed to shift control of the health care industry from the private sector to the public sector, from doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies to the federal government. The program was sold by Obama feigning outrage over insurance companies refusing to grant insurance to people with "preexisting conditions." But this is the same as an insurance company not granting fire insurance to a guy whose house has already burned down. The whole point of insurance is to share the risk before the catastrophe occurs, not to have a catastrophe and then get other people to pay for your losses. — Dinesh D'Souza

This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Indeed some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. — Dinesh D'Souza

In 1818, Jackson spied a real estate opportunity in Florida. The opportunity was created by marauding Indians conducting raids from Spanish Florida. The Monroe administration sent Jackson to Florida to stop the raids. Jackson declared his purpose to "chastise" the Indians, which in his parlance meant to kill them. Although he had been specifically instructed to deal with the Indians and not occupy Spanish land, Jackson entered West Florida, captured Pensacola, appointed a governor there, and started collecting taxes. — Dinesh D'Souza

If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in Islamic societies because coerced virtues are not virtues at all. — Dinesh D'Souza

The progressives are right that there is no way Gates can spend $50 billion on himself. He can only eat three meals a day and wear one set of clothes at a time. Even his heirs can be provided for with a fraction of that amount. Gates actually knows this. He has vowed to give away most of his fortune to charity. Nor is he waiting for death to do this. He has already given away billions. He buys mosquito nets for people in poor countries so that they don't get malaria. He invests in medical research. He funds educational projects in America and abroad. — Dinesh D'Souza

Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did. — Dinesh D'Souza

There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again. — Dinesh D'Souza

Whenever the government is involved, there is an element of coercion. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization. — Dinesh D'Souza

Did you know about the Democratic president who is the founder of modern progressivism - and also responsible for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan? What about the most popular Democratic president of the twentieth century - who blocked anti-lynching laws and for more than a decade cut deals with racists to exclude blacks from government programs? Then there is the president who is the hero of the Civil Rights laws - the same fellow that called blacks "niggers" and said he wanted to keep them confined to the Democratic plantation. — Dinesh D'Souza

What Obama is about, in my opinion, is he is a Global redistributionist. He's pursuing reparations but it's not racial reparations. It's global reparations for the sins and conquest of colonism. — Dinesh D'Souza

Lincoln is nowhere saying that blacks are inferior. He is not saying he rejects the idea of blacks marrying whites. He is simply refusing to go there. He is keeping the debate where it ought to be, on the simple question of whether people should be permitted to steal other people's life and labor by enslaving them. Of the black woman he says, "In her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal and the equal of all others."20 — Dinesh D'Souza

I came to America at the age of 17 as an exchange student, and a year later, I was a student at Dartmouth. I would say that the rather weak foundation of my Christianity was effectively battered at Dartmouth. I've had mostly a secular career. But I became intellectually interested in Christianity again in my mid-30s. — Dinesh D'Souza

The canard about the Civil Rights Movement is embedded within a larger deception that progressives uniformly put forward. This deception is intended to defuse the sordid history of the Democratic Party's two-century involvement in a parade of evils from slavery to segregation to lynching to forced sterilization to support for fascism to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. All these horrors are the work of the Democratic Party. — Dinesh D'Souza

Blacks' problems lie not in the heads of white people but rather in the wasted and incompletely fulfilled lives of too many black people. — Dinesh D'Souza

Obama gets his identity and his ideology from his father. — Dinesh D'Souza

America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being - confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented - is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced. — Dinesh D'Souza

Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. — Dinesh D'Souza

What was distinctively Western was not slavery but the moral crusade to end slavery. — Dinesh D'Souza

Death is the great wrecking ball that destroys everything. Everything that we have done, everything that we are doing now, and all our plans for the future are completely and irrevocably destroyed when we die. Only teenagers live in that state of temporary insanity when they believe themselves immune from death. — Dinesh D'Souza

Barack Obama II is born in the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu. His birth is recorded in two local newspapers. — Dinesh D'Souza

All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery - Senators John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, President James Buchanan, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, architect of the Dred Scott decision, and the main leaders of the Confederacy - were Democrats. — Dinesh D'Souza

Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, and Jeremiah Wright. This is a group I've previously called Obama's founding fathers. — Dinesh D'Souza

I would argue that the issue of God and the issue of science have the same roots. — Dinesh D'Souza

I'm completely Americanized - I have an American accent, an American wife - but a residue of me is foreign. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone's servants. The job of the leader was to lead. But Christ invented the notion that the way to lead is by serving the needs of others, especially those who are the most needy. — Dinesh D'Souza

I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet these fallible people matter. In this view, society should organize itself in order to meet their everyday concerns, which are elevated into a kind of spiritual framework. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture's high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from this basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings. — Dinesh D'Souza

There are some who invoke separation of church and state - to try to get the government out of the business of morality - but this is antithetical to what the founders wanted. The founders wanted to keep theology out of government so that government could focus on the proper business of morality. — Dinesh D'Souza

for Alinsky, democratic politics is basically a mechanism of legal extortion, justified by appeals to justice and equality. A — Dinesh D'Souza

Many years ago a college professor told me the story about the lion tamer and the lion. So here's the clever lion tamer, with his little twirling stick, and there is the lion, prancing obediently to the machinations of the lion tamer. Clearly the lion tamer is in charge. But, asked my professor, who is actually more powerful, the lion tamer or the lion? Obviously it is the lion. Why then does the lion do the bidding of the lion tamer? Because the lion doesn't know its own power. We, the American people, have been exploited and stolen from and we have put up with it at least in part because we are awed by the power of the progressive lion tamers. I admit they do have power, but I am also saying we do not appreciate our own strength. — Dinesh D'Souza

For Hillary, gangsterism is not merely a matter of means; it is also her end. Hillary wants to be the crime boss of America. That is the only way to satisfy her unquenchable desire for money, power, and social control. As we will see in this book, Hillary is a criminal who found the criminal practices of Saul Alinsky to be too weak-kneed for her taste, and Alinsky was a gangster who found the criminal practices of the Al Capone gang to be a tad sentimental. In short, Hillary is the true Democrat, the gangster par excellence. I suspect this is why the Democratic establishment lined up so quickly behind her. While the Republicans had a real primary, hotly contested, the Democrats had a primary in which Bernie seemed to win again and again but never seemed to make a dent in Hillary's lead. That's because the Democratic super-delegates were uniformly in her camp, even though there was throughout the campaign the risk that she would be indicted. — Dinesh D'Souza

First, the defenders of the Confederate cause were, almost without exception, Democrats. Coates cites many malefactors from Senator Jefferson Davis to Senator James Henry Hammond to Georgia Governor Joseph Brown. Yet while identifying these men as southerners and Confederates, Coates omits to identify them as Democrats. — Dinesh D'Souza

I am not a creationist as the term is usually understood. I believe that the earth is billions of years old and the universe even older. I do believe that God is the creator, but that's a completely different thing. I've written in defense of evolution and made arguments that are based on evolution. — Dinesh D'Souza

Most of the debates I've participated in have been on Christian college campuses or on secular campuses; so, largely before a student audience. — Dinesh D'Souza

The effect of capitalism is to steer human selfishness so that, through the invisible hand of competition, the energies of the capitalist produce the abundance from which the whole society benefits. — Dinesh D'Souza

While profit remains the final goal, entrepreneurs spend the better part of each day figuring out how better to serve the needs of their actual and potential customers. They are operationally, if not intentionally, altruistic. — Dinesh D'Souza

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful. — Dinesh D'Souza

America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world. — Dinesh D'Souza

Christianity makes of life a moral drama in which we play a starring role and in which the most ordinary events take on a grand significance. — Dinesh D'Souza

All the heroes of black emancipation - from the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, to the woman who organized the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, to the leader whose actions finally destroyed American slavery, Abraham Lincoln - were Republicans. It is of the utmost importance to progressive propagandists to conceal or at least ignore this essential historical truth. — Dinesh D'Souza

I love America, but I chose America. — Dinesh D'Souza

The main point of the Klan's orgy of violence was to prevent blacks from voting - voting, that is, for Republicans. Leading Democrats, including at least one president, two Supreme Court justices, and innumerable senators and congressmen, were Klan members. — Dinesh D'Souza

I want to give Michael Moore a run for his money. — Dinesh D'Souza

In all ages of the world, some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue.1 - Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Labor, 1847 — Dinesh D'Souza

WHITEWASHING HISTORY "Whoa!" you might say. "We've never heard this story about the Democrats. Are you making this stuff up?" Actually, no. Nothing I write in this chapter is controversial in terms of whether it happened or not. I am relying on the mainstream historians of slavery: David Brion Davis, Kenneth Stampp, Eugene Genovese, Orlando Patterson. How, then, can my arguments sound so outrageous? The reason is that progressive Democrats have whitewashed the party's history. They have cleaned up the record. — Dinesh D'Souza

Liberty is the essential precondition for achieving virtue ... In order to exercise virtue, we need to have the ability to choose freely. — Dinesh D'Souza

In the case of Obamacare, leading members of the intellectual class produced the appropriately rigged studies to promote the racket. Then members of the Obama administration and liberal Democrats in Congress took up these studies as an irrefutable demonstration of the wonders of Obamacare. Finally anchorpeople and reporters lined up to amplify the falsehoods and complete the sale to the American people. Despite all this, the American people remained unconvinced. Even so, the con men generated enough support that Democratic legislators, on a straight-party vote, got Obamacare through. — Dinesh D'Souza

It is easy to forget the cohesiveness of a free people in times of peace and prosperity. New York is an extreme example of the great pandemonium that results when countless individuals and groups pursue their diverse interests in the normal course of life. In a crisis, however, a national tribe comes together ... despite the centrifugal forces that pull us in different directions, there is a deep national unity that holds us together.
Unity, however, is not sufficient for the challenges ahead. America also needs the moral self-confidence to meet its adversary ... Americans cannot succeed unless they are convinced of fighting on behalf of the good. — Dinesh D'Souza

This is how Hillary conducts government policy. She is ruthless, she is grasping, she appears to have little empathy or concern for people. She is old, and mean, and even her laugh is a witch's cackle. There is almost nothing appealing about her. How, then, could she be the first choice of progressive Democrats and the apparent frontrunner for winning the presidency in November 2016? — Dinesh D'Souza

The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong - it is obscene. — Dinesh D'Souza

Similarly, when Lincoln insisted the Civil War was about the union, not about slavery, this is understood by competent historians to reflect Lincoln's determination to keep border states - Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri - within the union. These states had slavery, and if Lincoln framed the war as one to end slavery, the border states would have seceded. If they seceded, Lincoln believed the union cause was lost. Once again, Lincoln acted in statesmanlike fashion to hold the border states, and he was successful in doing so, thus shortening the war and ending slavery more quickly. — Dinesh D'Souza

O.K., if the desire to knock America off its pedestal, to redistribute American income to other countries, to shrink America's footprint in the world, makes you anti-American, then Obama is in fact anti-American. — Dinesh D'Souza

Other countries have been founded by 'accidents of force.' America is a creation of thought. — Dinesh D'Souza

Under normal circumstances, if the centerpiece of a president's campaign is helping the disadvantaged and we are our brother's keeper, the idea that this same guy has an actual brother living in third-world poverty without any help from Obama, this would have been on the cover of 'The New York Times.' But none of them are touching it. — Dinesh D'Souza

Lack of accomplishment is one thing; deceit is quite another. Everyone who has followed her career knows that Hillary is dishonest to the core, a "congenital liar" as columnist William Safire once put it. The writer Christopher Hitchens titled his book about the Clintons No One Left to Lie To. Even Hollywood mogul David Geffen, an avid progressive, said a few years ago of the Clintons, "Everybody in politics lies but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."3 — Dinesh D'Souza