Quotes from Joseph Sobran

By today's standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today's U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence..

When you internalize an author whose vision or philosophy is both rich and out of fashion, you gain a certain immunity from the pressures of the contemporary. The modern world, with it's fads, propaganda, and advertising, is forever trying to herd us into conformity. Great literature can help us to remain fad-proof.

The real triumph of the state occurs when its subjects refer to it as "we," like football fans talking about the home team.

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It's the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.

At the end of a century that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.

You can always tell when a politician has spoken from the heart: he takes it back the next day.

In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.

A bigot can be defined as a guy who gets caught practicing sociology without a license.

In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in High School to teaching remedial English in college.

The hypocrite recognizes the honest man as his deadly enemy.

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.

The purpose of a college education is to give you the correct view of minorities, and the means to live as far away from them as possible.

Freedom has ceased to be a birthright; it has come to mean whatever we are still permitted to do.

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