Top 90 Jonah Goldberg Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.”

— Jonah Goldberg

2. “I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.”

— Jonah Goldberg

3. “The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism.”

— Jonah Goldberg

4. “Liberals are Nazis, and Nazis are liberals. And if you don’t agree with me, you’re a Nazi too.”

— Jonah Goldberg

5. “We drown in information but we starve for knowledge.”

— Jonah Goldberg

6. “A rising economic tide is bad for people who live off of the poverty of others.”

— Jonah Goldberg

7. “I’ve just returned from my daughter’s Halloween parade at grade school. She was supergirl – and she was perfect. And, even better, she still considers boys to be made of kryptonite.”

— Jonah Goldberg

8. “Our country, if you read the ‘Federalist Papers,’ is about disagreement. It’s about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob – not the mob itself.”

— Jonah Goldberg

9. “Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.”

— Jonah Goldberg

10. “The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day.”

— Jonah Goldberg

11. “The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.”

— Jonah Goldberg

12. “Tribalism is natural, but it can also be manufactured. Manufactured tribalism is the very essence of identity politics, the heart of aristocracy, and the soul of nationalism. “Identity politics” may be a modern term, but it is an ancient idea. Embracing it is not a step forward but a retreat to the past.”

— Jonah Goldberg

13. “I like vengeance as much as the next guy, if the next guy likes vengeance a whole lot...”

— Jonah Goldberg

14. “In his unintentionally chilling 1890 essay, Leaders of Men, Wilson explained that the “true leader” uses the masses like “tools.” He must not traffic in subtleties and nuance, as literary men do. Rather, he must speak to stir their passions, not their intellects. In short, he must be a skillful demagogue.”

— Jonah Goldberg

15. “When we fail to properly civilize people, human nature rushes in. Absent a higher alternative, human nature drives us to make sense of the world on its own instinctual terms: That’s tribalism.”

— Jonah Goldberg

16. “The Constitution is a paper manifestation of a deeper cultural commitment to liberty and limited government, in the same way a marriage certificate is a physical and legalistic representation of something far deeper, mysterious, and complicated. When the marriage fails, the marriage certificate won’t save it. And when the American people lose their love of liberty, the Constitution will not save us either.”

— Jonah Goldberg

17. “To fret about political, social, or economic inequality in a free society is to fret about the problem of freedom itself, for in the presence of freedom there will always be inequality of some kind.”

— Jonah Goldberg

18. “Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.”

— Jonah Goldberg

19. “You know those Navy SEALs, they weren’t Democrats and Republicans. They were just doing what was best for America. Wouldn’t that be a great country if all of you Americans were just like that? You followed orders, you marched in step and you followed my agenda.”

— Jonah Goldberg

20. “When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I’m grateful. It’s like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.”

— Jonah Goldberg

Featured in: Hipster Quotes

21. “But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don’t have one.”

— Jonah Goldberg

22. “As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths.”

— Jonah Goldberg

23. “Facts are mere speed bumps on the road to lefty moral outrage.”

— Jonah Goldberg

24. “There’s nothing within science per se that says medical researchers must not experiment on human subjects; it is the imposition of ethical dogma that constrains the scientist.”

— Jonah Goldberg

25. “The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not long be found at all. – Richard Weaver, 1962 I.”

— Jonah Goldberg

26. “Simply because the nanny-state wants to hug you doesn’t mean it’s not tyrannical if you don’t want to be hugged.”

— Jonah Goldberg

27. “Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.”

— Jonah Goldberg

28. “Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don’t matter.”

— Jonah Goldberg

29. “We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.”

— Jonah Goldberg

30. “Joe Biden says the Wall Street crisis is the result of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which makes as much sense as blaming the rising price of fairy dust. But as a wise man once asked, Who gives a rat’s patoot what Joe Biden thinks?”

— Jonah Goldberg

31. “Are you a producer or a looter? If diversity were always and everywhere good we would be clamoring for more midgets in the NBA.”

— Jonah Goldberg

32. “America’s political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.”

— Jonah Goldberg

33. “Champions of Liberty get called Fascists by Champions of Statism.”

— Jonah Goldberg

34. “That internal beast is human nature. It cannot be killed; it can only be tamed. And even then, constant vigilance is required.”

— Jonah Goldberg

35. “In crude Marxist terms, liberals have a theory of infallible government that is constantly at war with the reality of life.”

— Jonah Goldberg

36. “Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government.”

— Jonah Goldberg

37. “The truth is France has been the chief Western advocate of normalizing relations with Iraq – one of its largest trading partners – for years, partly because France holds billions in IOUs from Iraq that wouldn’t be redeemable by a new regime.”

— Jonah Goldberg

38. “When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, “We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That’s why I’m going to abandon all my objections and agree with you”?”

— Jonah Goldberg

39. “The Founders understood that democracy was important, but if you didn’t filter it through a republican system you’d be just as likely to end up with a tyranny of the majority as you would with a healthy society. Don’t worry, I won’t quote the Federalist Papers, but trust me, it’s in there.”

— Jonah Goldberg

40. “The more you socialize the costs of personal liberty, the more license you give others to regulate it.”

— Jonah Goldberg

41. “Today’s unions are less Mobbed-up than those of yesteryear to be sure, but they’re hardly above tactics that would be considered intimidating and coercive.”

— Jonah Goldberg

42. “The Mars Polar Lander cost the average American the price of half a cheeseburger. A human lander would cost the average American more – perhaps even ten cheeseburgers! So be it. That is no great sacrifice.”

— Jonah Goldberg

43. “Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.”

— Jonah Goldberg

44. “Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you’re just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.”

— Jonah Goldberg

45. “And in the minds of progressives you are free to live anyway you want so long as it’s progressive.”

— Jonah Goldberg

46. “Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today’s liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism.”

— Jonah Goldberg

47. “You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad.”

— Jonah Goldberg

48. “Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone.”

— Jonah Goldberg

49. “Both Lincoln and King were appealing to the story – the best story – we tell about ourselves. That our story begins with Americans falling short of the ideals embedded in the Founding is not an indictment of the ideals; it is testament to the nobility of America’s story arc.”

— Jonah Goldberg

50. “Yes, I know liberals are more empirical because Jonathan Chait says they are, but my empirical studies of liberal empiricism keep spitting out contradictory findings.”

— Jonah Goldberg