Charles Krauthammer Quotes

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

A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.

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.

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

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

If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House.

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

Better to be paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up

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

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

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

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.

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

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.

Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

Middleness is the very enemy of the bold.

After endless days of commuting on the freeway to an antiseptic, sealed-window office, there is a great urge to backpack in the woods and build a fire.

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

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

After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba, and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.

It’s not the advertising - it’s the dog food. Every time anybody has a look at it or has a lick of it, they don’t like it.

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

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

I distrust all multiculturalism, liberal or conservative. The Balkans amply demonstrate the perils of Balkanization.

Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.

I don't really care what a public figure thinks. I care about what he does. Let God probe his inner heart.

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

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

Where religion is trivialized, one is unlikely to find persecution.

The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism.

Identity politics is the mother's milk of the Democratic Left.

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

I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time.

I would write my editorials using a manual typewriter in pitch-black darkness... I would produce the whole thing without having seen the text.

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

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

In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection.

A one-hour work-week...would minimize the damage that Congress can do.

The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.

Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.

I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That's the day I showed up for work at 'The New Republic' magazine.

Now this is a way to approach our healthcare problems: increase the number of tax collectors and decrease the number of doctors - brilliant!

So far as Im concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Somebody actually said that I'm the only entity on earth, other than rogue states, that has received an apology from the White House.

Ron Paul is not going to be president, so we don't have to worry about who's going to be in his cabinet.