72+ Victor Davis Hanson Quotes On Democracy, Politics And Constitution

Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, political essayist, and former classics professor. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. He is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Victor Davis Hanson on democracy, leadership, politics.

Top 10 Victor Davis Hanson Quotes

1. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.
2. Multiculturalism is a good reminder that when standards are relative, there are no standards at all.
3. Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.
4. Entertainers wrongly assume that their fame, money, and influence arise from broad knowledge rather than natural talent, looks, or mastery of a narrow skill.
5. Stalin and Mao killed over 80 million and did not make omelets despite the broken eggs.
6. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom...never .
7. Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.
8. Any time the Western way of war can be unleashed on an enemy stupid enough to enter its arena, victory is assured.
9. Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want.
10. States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.

Victor Davis Hanson Short Quotes

• Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world.
• I'm kind of old-fashioned because I was born and live in the same house for six generations.
• Most authoritarians do not surrender power voluntarily.
• War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.
• Cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.

Victor Davis Hanson Quotes About Politics

The wisdom and spirit of Churchill not only saved Britain from the Third Reich but saved Western civilization from a Nazi Dark Ages when no other nation was willing to take up that defense. Churchill was the greatest military, political and spiritual leader of the 20th century. — Victor Davis Hanson

A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks - no, acts - like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream. — Victor Davis Hanson

California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteries-and squandered that gift within a generation. — Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson Quotes About Thinking

Racial inequality has gotten worse in the last years because any time you have a moribund economy, the people who historically have had more problems getting jobs have suffered. And that, I think, is triggering a lot of the animosity. — Victor Davis Hanson

I think the Democrat Party is taking its cue from the media. When the media has a narrative, whether it's the use of profanity, the Democratic Party follows it. — Victor Davis Hanson

I think people are beating each other up in the halls of Congress, as they did in the late 1850s. — Victor Davis Hanson

If I talk to black students on campus, they're not sympathetic to the people who are not sympathetic with [Black Lives Matter movement]. The fact that you want to argue rather than find some common ground, I think, has gotten a lot worse in the last years. — Victor Davis Hanson

I think everybody realizes some things went wrong in the Middle East and that most of the terrorism is emanating from that area. — Victor Davis Hanson

We have had raucous moments in our history. And I think we're in one now. But it's not going to endanger the future of democracy. — Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson Famous Quotes And Sayings

History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy. — Victor Davis Hanson

The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory. — Victor Davis Hanson

Behind every liberal philanthropist fortune is a huge capitalist score. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford now to be liberal - an expensive indulgence - because in their early incarnations they were no-holds-barred capitalists who made lots of enemies conducting business without mercy and in search of pure profit. — Victor Davis Hanson

Western elites - the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism - are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all. — Victor Davis Hanson

We may casually talk of all sorts of new programs and 'stimulus,' but the vast trillion-dollar collective national debt and rising annual deficits will insidiously hamstring almost everything we plan to do. — Victor Davis Hanson

There's just no - nothing like this country, which is the only, really, multiracial country that's tried to share in a common culture in the history of civilization that's pulled it off. A lot of the times, we want perfection. If we're not perfect, we're not good. — Victor Davis Hanson

Westernization, coupled with globalization, has created an affluent and leisured elite that now gravitates to universities, the media, bureaucracies, and world organizations, all places where wealth is not created, but analyzed, critiqued, and lavishly spent. — Victor Davis Hanson

Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly — and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe. — Victor Davis Hanson

Even Hollywood millionaires are now clamoring for legal protections for their illegal-alien nannies and gardeners, though such elites would hardly countenance a similar legal laxity that would allow foreign film technicians, screenwriters, and actors to flood southern California to work in their industry for a fourth of their own pay. — Victor Davis Hanson

Unhappy voters thought the anemic economy, Obamacare, the collapse of U.S. foreign policy, the scandals in government, and the incompetent handling of everything from the Islamic State to Ebola were the only real issues. Democrats'€™ refusal to acknowledge them did not make these failures go away. — Victor Davis Hanson

In the case of [Donald] Trump, he was able to tell people that elites live in gated communities, where they have walls around their home. — Victor Davis Hanson

I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke. — Victor Davis Hanson

Donald Trump, he didn't dismantle Eastern European missile defense. He didn't go to Geneva and press a plastic red button. He didn't make fun of Romney for saying Russia was an existential enemy. He didn't have a hot mic exchange with a Russian President saying that he would be more flexible with the Russians after the elections. — Victor Davis Hanson

Stop seeing socialists and anti-Americans as Democrats. When a Michael Moore compares beheaders to our own Minutemen and laments that too many Democrats were in the World Trade Center, he deserves no platform alongside Wesley Clark or a seat next to Jimmy Carter or praise for his pseudo-dramas from high Democrats. — Victor Davis Hanson

After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama's faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record. — Victor Davis Hanson

It's radical Islamic terrorism. And yet, when you see the last eight years, something's gone wrong to call it violent extremism or man-caused disasters. It would be as if we were looking at [Adolf] Hitler in the 1930s. And we were afraid to say that he was a Nazi. — Victor Davis Hanson

Apologizing for our past sins may reveal character and for a time lessen anti-Americanism abroad, but if it is done without acknowledging that the sins of America are the sins of mankind, and that our remedies are so often exceptional, then it only earns transitory applause—and a more lasting contempt that we ourselves do not believe in the values we profess. — Victor Davis Hanson

We're in a very Orwellian situation where when we - we've slashed defense. And we've raised taxes. And we consider $600 billion annual deficit success because it's not $1 trillion. — Victor Davis Hanson

Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether. — Victor Davis Hanson

The columnist like myself or people at Stanford University don't wake up in the morning and see their job outsourced. Yet we promote free markets. But we're not sensitive to what that does to other people who don't have our privilege. — Victor Davis Hanson

Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies. — Victor Davis Hanson

So why, after prior successes, did Obama's race/class/gender attack finally sputter out like the French at Waterloo? — Victor Davis Hanson

A country that cannot count its own illegal aliens - estimates range from 8-12 million - with a porous 2,000 mile border is not secure despite twelve carrier battle groups. We must accept that it is a cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy to export illegally each year a million of its own to the United States to avoid needed reform at home and to influence American domestic policy. — Victor Davis Hanson

This is something that Donald Trump has been very effective at exploiting because throughout our history, one of the things that was important to galvanize the country against a perceived threat has been philology. — Victor Davis Hanson

What is about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy? Great looks? That Middle-America accent? The 5 kids and he-man husband? The lack of a powerful father or spouse who could jump-start her 'feminist' career with money, contacts, and influence? That Idaho BA? The wink? The charisma and, indeed, sensuality so lacking in her angry critics? — Victor Davis Hanson

Politicians in their hubris who believe they can ignore debt or wish it away are sorely disappointed - as we see now with the plummeting approval ratings of both the administration and Congress. — Victor Davis Hanson

Ancient wisdom: deal in personal trust; your word is your bond; avoid extremes; treat the money you invest for others as something sacred; don't take any more perks than you would wish others to take; don't borrow what you couldn't suddenly pay back; imagine the worse case financial scenario and expect it very may well happen; the wealthier you become the more humble you should act. — Victor Davis Hanson

This bloody past suggests to us that enemies cease hostilities only when they are battered enough to acknowledge that there is no hope in victory - and thus that further resistance means only useless sacrifice. — Victor Davis Hanson

It's very difficult, historically, to define what an elite is. But whatever it is, people are very angry at that idea, I think, not so much because of wealth or privilege as much as attitude that the populous masses, if I could use that overused term, feel that a particular government or cultural group is not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology. — Victor Davis Hanson

The fact is that we have been consistent in a predictable 60-year commitment to national security, while our friends and former enemies - by intent or default - have followed different paths since 1989. We stayed mostly the same as they became hypopowers that, to take a small example, would and could do nothing should a madman in Korea wish to kill millions. — Victor Davis Hanson

Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009. — Victor Davis Hanson

Obama's immigration legacy will be the juxtaposition of his serial insistence that he was not a king or an emperor, and could not contravene the Constitution by granting a blanket amnesty, with his efforts to do just that when it was no longer politically inexpedient. I don't think a president has ever quite so habitually warned the country of the dangers that would soon emanate from himself. — Victor Davis Hanson

Gas prices in many parts of the country are nearing $4 a gallon; it could get even worse as unrest spreads throughout the oil-exporting Middle East. Yet the Obama administration once again seems to see no crisis. It has curtailed new leases for offshore oil exploration for seven years and exempted thousands of acres in the West from new drilling. It will not reconsider opening up small areas of Alaska with known large oil reserves. — Victor Davis Hanson

Globalization has enriched the planet beyond belief, leading to ever-increased demands of perfection. And thanks to 24/7 communications, we all instantaneously know when these expectations aren't met. — Victor Davis Hanson

The easily ridiculed, so-so status quo often hides Herculean efforts by those whom we take for granted, and who, working in the shadows, guarantee civilization instead of chaos. — Victor Davis Hanson

In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources. — Victor Davis Hanson

The shutdown may have temporarily sidetracked the Republicans, yet Obamacare threatens much worse for the Democrats. By 2014 the former will be ancient history, while the latter will be an ongoing mess. — Victor Davis Hanson

If the Democrats feel they have lost the public's confidence in their stewardship of national security, then the threat of Iran offers a Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, or John Kerry an opportunity to get out front now and pledge support for a united effort - attacking Bush from the right about too tepid a stance rather from the predictable left that we are 'hegemonic' and 'imperialistic' every time we use force abroad. — Victor Davis Hanson

Almost every key indicator of the current economy - unemployment, deficits, housing, energy - argues that Obama's reactionary all-powerful statist approach has only made things far worse. — Victor Davis Hanson

It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. — Victor Davis Hanson

Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. — Victor Davis Hanson

Trump is a symptom of widespread disgust, not the head of a carefully crafted ideological movement with a checklist of issues. — Victor Davis Hanson

Of course, the Clintons are not only corrupt but cynical as well. They accept that the progressive media, the foundations, the universities, the bureaucracies, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley honor power more than trendy left-wing politics; they well understand that their fans will, for them, make the necessary adjustments to contextualize Clinton criminality or amorality. — Victor Davis Hanson

If I talk to rural people where I live - mostly Hispanic but also poor white - they're not sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement. — Victor Davis Hanson

[People] are alike in a sense that the Bernie Sanders anger at Hillary Clinton was that she was a so-called progressive and yet had managed to make $125 million. — Victor Davis Hanson

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history. — Victor Davis Hanson

I wish I could attribute the absence of any conventional Arab offensive in the last 20 years to a change of political climate or a willingness to abide by past accords. But unfortunately it is more likely that the Egyptians or Syrians concluded that the next time their tanks headed to Tel Aviv, there was nothing stopping the counterassaults from ending up in downtown Cairo or Damascus. — Victor Davis Hanson

I see a continuation of the populist outrage that prompted the Brexit and sparked the Bernie Sanders campaign. — Victor Davis Hanson

Life Lessons by Victor Davis Hanson

1. Victor Davis Hanson's work emphasizes the importance of studying history in order to understand the present and anticipate the future.
2. He emphasizes the importance of examining the past to understand the motivations and decisions of individuals, as well as the broader implications of those decisions.
3. He also emphasizes the importance of studying history to understand the consequences of decisions and the importance of learning from mistakes in order to avoid repeating them.