Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is a radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, lawyer, and a gifted writer.
Shapiro began writing books at a young age. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the U.S. He started writing his first book, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth at the age of 17 as well.
He writes columns for Newsweek and Creators Syndicate and also founded The Daily Wire which he serves as the editor-in-chief. Aside from writing, he’s also the host of a radio show and daily political podcast called ‘The Ben Shapiro Show’.
Listed below are the top Ben Shapiro quotes and sayings that show his views and opinions about life, politics, the government, and so much more.
Table of Contents
Ben Shapiro Quotes About Life
1. “Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes thought crime becomes a reality.”
2. “Every so often, we all gaze into the abyss. It’s a depressing fact of life that eventually the clock expires; eventually, the sand in the hourglass runs out. It’s the leaving behind of everything that matters to us that hurts the most.”
3. “Kids are fat because of lack of parenting.”
4. “The European style of living is seductive: fewer hours worked, more hours at the cafe, less concern over self-betterment. But that style of living does not produce a purposeful life.”
5. “The vast majority of murdered whites are murdered by other whites. That’s why there’s no national outrage when a white person is killed by a black person: it’s not evidence of some underlying black violence problem directed against white people.”
6. “There are times that everyone hates his or her job. Were they freed from the economic consequences of having these jobs, they’d drop out of the workforce. There are only two problems with this strategy: First, someone has to pay for it; second, it is not the recipe for human fulfillment.”
7. “Having children truly ends adolescence. We are all either parents or children: responsibility-takers or those who demand from others.”
8. “Every time we rock our babies in the night, we bring order back to a disordered world. Every time we look down at our children and cry, we make the world one shade brighter. That’s what children do to us – and for us.”
9. “There is no greater way to ensure that universities remain a hotbed of leftist thought than to guarantee that professors knight their own successors. But that’s basically how the Ph.D. system works, with sitting professors approving the work of would-be professors.”
Ben Shapiro Quotes About Government
1. “During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so a was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again.”
2. “During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.”
3. “When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.”
4. “Geopolitical drama lessened but did not die after the Cold War; in 2008, the specter of thousands of seeming automatons banging drums at the opening of the Beijing Games frightened and enthralled the world, reminding us that China was a nation on the rise, a competitor for global dominance.”
5. “If the United States had maintained its spending under Ronald Reagan, it is possible that the attacks of 9/11 – presaged by Islamic terror attacks on multiple American targets beginning with the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 – would have been stopped.”
6. “Putin himself is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses bare-chested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioactive poisoning.”
7. “Members of Congress have more in common with the people they hobnob in Washington, D.C., than they do with the people they’re supposed to represent.”
Ben Shapiro Quotes About Politics
1. “Why should Congresspeople have to visit D.C.? Thanks to Skype, meetings are possible across the country. Thanks to email, communications are simple. And we’ve had the technology to vote from afar for decades. Why should we have backroom deals made over cigars thousands of miles distant from those who are affected by those deals?”
2. “The story of Detroit’s bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.”
3. “Bad presidents don’t deserve holidays. They deserve scorn.”
4. “Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don’t give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.”
5. “Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?”
6. “It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression.”
7. “Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept – it is a religious one, an acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over property, sovereignty the Left utterly rejects.”
8. “Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system – they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.”
9. “In actuality, California could be a wonderful place to live. In fact, if you’re highly educated and ambitious, you can do quite well here while enjoying the sun and the fun. The only problem: California will then blame you for your success and recommend that all your cash be removed from you.”
10. “When a black person kills a black person, the media ignores it completely.”
11. “Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.”
12. “When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.”
Ben Shapiro Quotes About Obama Administration
1. “If Republicans triumph in 2014, it will undoubtedly be as a result of Obamacare. In 2010, Republicans soared to historic victory because the much-maligned Tea Party spearheaded mass resistance to Obama’s takeover of the healthcare industry.”
2. “Primarily affecting low-information voters and members of the mainstream media, Obama Worship Syndrome attributes impossible capabilities to Obama’s political opponents, finds excuses for every Obama failure in everyone around him and praises the president as the finest politician – nay, human being – of our time.”
3. “Michael Lewis, author of ‘Moneyball,’ got special access for a profile of Obama for ‘Vanity Fair’ – but Obama insisted on redlining his quotes.”
4. “President Obama’s respect for the Constitution does not extend to freedom of religion – his administration has forced religious business owners to pay for insurance plans that cover activities in violation of religious precepts.”
5. “President Obama has only had two major policy victories during his tenure: the stimulus package and Obamacare. Both are massively unpopular. The stimulus package launched the Tea Party movement. Obamacare led to the Republican wipeout of 2010.”
6. “Obama’s pop-cultural focus may seem demeaning to the office of the presidency. It may be mockable. But it is also tremendously effective.”
7. “No number of repairs will be able to fix Obamacare. The website is the least of Americans’ worries.”
8. “In order for Obamacare’s cost structure to work, millions of Americans must sign up to pay inflated prices; that would help pay for the subsidies to cover insurance company costs on those with pre-existing conditions.”
9. “Obama wants to raise the issue of immigration reform so that he can demonize Republicans as anti-Hispanic. That’s why Obama ignores the broad support for an immigration plan that would provide border security once and for all and then deal with the illegal immigrants who live here.”
10. “The Muslim world just doesn’t believe that skin color is all that important. Obama may be half-black, but he’s still all-Western, according to them. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black, white or green – if you’re not a devotee of Muhammad, you don’t matter.”
11. “President Obama himself has attributed the legitimacy of the Jewish State not to its historic identity as Jewish territory, but to the Holocaust.”
Ben Shapiro, More Quotes And Sayings
1. “Technically, web browsers can control what users see, and sites using Javascript can overwrite anything coming from the original authors. Browsers heavily utilize Javascript to create an interactive Internet; sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Gmail could be crippled without it.”
2. “Hillary Clinton is not that fascinating a person. According to those who have spent time with her, she’s harsh and demanding. According to those who haven’t – like her husband – she’s a delight.”
3. “Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America’s global enemies sense a failure of will.”
4. “One wonders what exactly Israel did to earn Arab enmity between 1948 and 1967 when Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria.”
5. “The Left masks its distaste for the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality in a straw man argument that Bible believers are violent bigots. They are not. Citing the Bible doesn’t make you a bigot against human beings – it makes you a bigot against sin, which is a good thing.”
6. “Musicians are, by and large, not the most politically savvy crew.”
7. “The argument that gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.”
8. “What sort of job can you hold in America in which it is safe to hold the personal conviction that same-sex marriage is wrong? The answer: there is no such job. Except for Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. Then you’re fine.”
9. “The greatest bulwark against an overreaching government, as tyrants know, is a religious population. That is because religious people from communities of interest adverse to government control of their lives; religious communities rely on their families and each other rather than an overarching government utilizing force.”
10. “Same-sex marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us – the Supreme Court, President Obama – against traditional religion.”
11. “The greatest obstacle to the welfare state is not greed but the private charity that makes the welfare state irrelevant; the greatest obstacle to re-education of children in the name of the collective is allegiance to a higher power. More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.”
12. “By giving professors jobs for life, universities create a feeling of unanswerable power among too many. Tenured professors who are uninterested in serving the student body are less likely to respond favorably to criticism, and are more likely to feel the freedom to intimidate or harass those with opposing viewpoints.”
13. “President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It’s an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.”
14. “It is no wonder that advocates of Obamacare blindly push forward with their agenda to force religious Americans to violate their own precepts: in the war between the state and the individual, religion is on the side of the individual and his or her relationship with God. That is why symbolic prayer matters. It is symbolic.”
15. “Only reprobates father children and then abandon them.”
16. “A West Virginia 10 is a California 4. Or at least that’s what legend tells us: The Legend of Dr. Feelgood. Plastic surgery has a permanent home here, which is why Nancy Pelosi loves our Botoxed beaches. Beverly Hills looks like a moving Madame Tussauds.”
17. “The violation of press freedoms has been egregious under this administration, even as the press fetes President Obama as an honest and effective commander-in-chief.”
18. “2013 was a year of myths falling apart. The myth of President Obama – a myth in which Obama was a messianic figure descending to bequeath health care, equality, and brotherhood on mankind – imploded. The myth of an America embracing the leftist social agenda collapsed.”
19. “When Americans are faced with the prospect that they can never earn their way to wealth, they have two choices: to rebel against the system, or to settle into depressed complacency.”
20. “Google is a private company. It has the capacity to utilize its massive power for whatever political agenda it chooses. But for it to pretend to be an advocate for Internet freedom while simultaneously disadvantaging messages it finds politically incorrect is deeply hypocritical.”
21. “Vaccinations absolutely work, and have dramatically decreased rates of childhood diseases.”
22. “President Obama’s consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more ‘balanced’ global power structure.”
23. “As of September 2012, 168 out of the 602 released Guantanamo Bay detainees are suspected of returning to terrorism. So, is this a winning scenario for the United States? Of course not.”
24. “After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to say which element of the U.S. military had participated in the assault. Until Vice President Joe Biden decided to talk about it on national television, that is.”
25. “The Obamacare contraception mandate was never about freedom. It was always about pitting secularism against religion, and using the power of government to sponsor secularism.”
26. “Al Gore had no problem taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the government of Qatar to sell his Current TV to Al Jazeera America.”
27. “Obama’s entire foreign policy was predicated on the notion that by existing, he would bridge all gaps and bury all hatchets. Instead, the Muslim world burns his picture even as he tells them he respects their radicalism. It turns out that diversity is a one-way street for the devotees of global Islam.”
28. “The separation of church and state was meant to protect the church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.”
29. “Matt Damon’s anti-fracking diatribe was funded by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.”
30. “America’s liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected ivory towers for the pseudo-elite who earn their livings writing papers nobody reads about gender roles in the poetry of Maya Angelou.”
31. “Selective Biblical quotation is a favorite of leftists who interpret the Bible the same way they do the Constitution: as a Chinese menu designed to allow picking and choosing. That’s because when many Democrats take the Bible as a whole, they realize how much they despise it.”
32. “Conservatives are routinely pilloried on television. A&E likely greenlit ‘Duck Dynasty’ in the first place because executives believed Americans would laugh at the redneck antics of the self-described ‘white trash’ family.”
33. “When I was a kid, I’d wake up extraordinarily early every morning and turn on the television, scanning for episodes of ‘The Jetsons.’ For some reason, I loved the notion of a future where there would be flying cars, supercomputers, and most of all, robot maids to take care of the chores.”
34. “Historically, professors have defended tenure as a way to protect their individualistic thought. But tenure can also be used as a club to wield against the powerless.”
35. “The ouster of Jill Abramson as executive editor of ‘The New York Times’ sent shock waves through the media landscape. Reports that she has fired thanks in part to a soured relationship based on the ‘Times’ alleged sexist pay discrepancy only made those shock waves stronger.”
If you would like to discover more of Ben Shapiro’s works and writings, we would suggest you read one of his bestselling books, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.