Ben Shapiro

"A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work."

"Nihilism, narcissism, and hedonism are natural results of the chaotic existential subjectivism popularized by the Left. If the hallmark of the baby boomers was rebellion, the hallmark of my generation is jadedness. Nothing really matters—we're cosmically alone."

"Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents—nurturing, attentive, and overly present (as those teenagers often saw it) authority figures. Today's teenagers and their music rebel against parents because they are not parents—not nurturing, not attentive, and often not even there."

"Real-life teens wish they could live like the teens Hollywood promotes. Everyone has sex, and relationships are deep and meaningful, even if they only last a couple episodes. There are never any consequences to any action, except for experiencing the angst of teenage life alongside the characters. When a generation becomes desensitized to the ramifications of the culture around them, it's natural to seek out any sort of feeling, even angst."

"As a general matter, the left's favorite three lines of attack are (1) you're stupid; (2) you're mean; (3) you're corrupt. Sarah Palin is supposedly stupid; Mitt Romney is supposedly mean; Dick Cheney is supposedly corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in."

"There will be no conversation in which you call me a racist, and I explain why I'm not a racist. That's a conversation for idiots."

"When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe because you happen to disagree with them about tax policy or same-sex marriage or abortion, that's bullying. When someone slanders you because you happen to disagree with them about global warming or the government shutdown, that's bullying. When someone labels you a bad human being because they disagree with you, they are bullying you. They are attacking your character without justification. That's nasty. In fact, it makes them nasty."

"We believe freedom is built upon the twin notions that God created every human in His image, and that human beings are capable of investigating and exploring God's world. Those notions were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively."

"We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages—in seeking to graft ourselves to rootless philosophical movements of the moment, cutting ourselves off from our own roots—we have damned ourselves to an existential wandering."

"Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.""

"President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms—not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually."

"Is Donald Trump the best Republican candidate for president out there? It would be tough to argue otherwise. He's got all the makings of a breakout star; he's got bravado and the cash to back it up."

"The answer is deceptively simple: The Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch Schindler's List; they visit temple on Yom Kippur—sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming."

"The Jewish people has always been plagued by Bad Jews, who undermine it from within. In America, those Bad Jews largely vote Democrat."

"This is a clarifying election. We've learned that certain media members were willing to sell out long-held principles for ratings. We've learned that certain conservative voters were willing to let conservatism go by the wayside to hero worship a godking. Now we're learning that the Republican leadership is everything we thought they were. We will remember their names. It's time for a new brand of conservative leadership—and those who kowtow to Trump shouldn't be a part of it."

"Conservatives used to care too much about values and republicanism to buy ends-justify-the-means logic. But it increasingly appears that political expedience now outweighs basic morality. At least one side of the seemed to care about truth. Now both sides are competing to see who can race to the bottom fastest."

"This is pure ends-justify-the-means logic. And the means are pushing falsehood. The notion here seems to be that Trump is helping America avoid perdition, and thus must be given leeway to lie; if we didn't allow him to lie, the left would continue to do so, and then they'd win and drive us straight into Hell. But that suggests that truth no longer has the capacity to drive voters or Americans. If that's true, is finished as a principle—if we can only lie to voters to get them to vote for us, that undermines the decency of republicanism altogether."

"These demagogic non sequiturs undercut conservative claims to value the truth. And that has policy consequences: the supposedly conservative Pence and company have been pushing the lie for a week now that the free market is a failure and case-by-case economic fascism from above is the solution to lost American jobs. When truth doesn't matter, lies about policy are sure to follow."

"Just because the left has ignored and disparaged truth for years is no excuse for the right to do so as well. And unfortunately, truth-free politics seems to be growing exponentially on the right."

"Very often these days, we hear about the wonderful richness of the international community. Americans are chastised for failing to go along with the international community on climate change; failing to follow the consensus of the international community on health care; failing to mirror the priorities of the international community in foreign policy.But here's the reality: There is no international community. There is merely a group of states motivated by self-interest. Sometimes those self-interests overlap. Other times they don't. But let's not pretend that the international community somehow maintains a sort of collective moral standing merely by dint of numbers. In fact, precisely the opposite is often true. … Hamas isn't hiding the ball. It is evil. It celebrates evil. It pays terrorists to commit acts of evil. But the international community isn't hiding the ball either when its members refuse to condemn terrorism as terrorism when it is directed against disfavored members of the international community."

"Here's the truth: Radical Islam is dangerous. The Islamic world has a serious problem with radical Islam. And large swaths of the Muslim world are, in fact, hostile to Western views on matters ranging from freedom of speech to women's rights."

"So, what would tempt the New York Times to print an illustration directly from the mind of Julius Streicher? The fact that the Times, like many of today's mainstream media outlets, has been completely and utterly willing to cover for and, indeed, engage in anti-Semitism, so long as it is disguised as anti-Zionism. … Back in 2015, the New York Times printed a list of lawmakers who voted against the anti-Israel Iran deal—listing them by the percentage of Jews in their districts and noting which ones were Jewish themselves. Back in 2014, the public editor of the newspaper, Margaret Sullivan, advised reporters to cover the Palestinians as "more than just victims," thanks to the paper's insanely one-sided coverage. … The mainstream Left has engaged in self-flattering blindness when it comes to Jew-hatred. And all too often, that blindness veers into outright anti-Semitism."

"A pluralistic democracy requires three factors to function: a shared cultural space; a shared belief in key ideas, largely embedded in the Constitution; and a shared willingness to leave one another alone. As each component erodes, so, too, does the possibility of a united country."

"If tyranny is going to come in the United States, it's going to come from people who are so fearful of the liberty of Americans, that they believe that the government should shut down all sorts of freedoms that we hold dear."

"Okay, well, the fact is that if you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough. That'd be a you problem."

"They're talking about this dumb story that President Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes. Which, by the way, I don't care whether it does anything, I just think it sounds cool. I mean, what if there are sharks in the hurricanes? What if it's a sharknado? What then, guys? Have you thought about that? Just the idea—any time you're talking about nuking a random thing that's not really going to hurt anybody, I'll admit, the 13-year-old boy in me is kinda for it."

"There was a national apology for slavery. It was called the Civil War where 700,000 Americans died."

"Meanwhile, the polarization of the American public continues apace with wokescolds doing their best to ruin every aspect of American life. I'm very excited that Merriam-Webster Dictionary has now added the non-binary pronoun they to the dictionary. Because when I look at a book for definitions of words, what I want is a made-up definition of a word that has never been used this way in all of human history: a plural noun, used as a singular noun, to refer to a singular gender. We're gonna use a plural noun, and Merriam-Webster is gonna go along with this, which just demonstrates once and for all that logic has gone out the window. People are tailoring science to meet politically correct demands, people are tailoring language to meet politically correct demands."

""I am a Jew." Those have been the words of the Jewish people for three millennia. Those were the words of the men, women and children of Masada. Those were the words of the followers of Bar Kokhba. Those were the words of Jews in Granada in 1066, and the Rhineland in 1096, and Khmelnytsky from 1648 to 1657, and Kishinev in 1903, in Hebron in 1929. Those were the words of Jews in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Those were the last words of Daniel Pearl. And those are my words, too."

"There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood who feel the obligation—they have a perverse leftist view of history, pushed by the Soviet Union, that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity. And therefore, the cure for intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity."

"There certainly is a war on Christianity. It's coming from some people who are secular Jews. It's coming from a lot of leftists. Most Jews in America don't care about Judaism."

"Ben Shapiro: Why are we mainstreaming delusion? Drew Pinsky: It's not delusion. Samantha Schacher: Why would you call it delusion? Ben Shapiro: Because Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner—I'll call him Caitlyn Jenner, because that's… Samantha Schacher: No, it's her. You're not being polite to the pronoun. Disrespectful. Ben Shapiro: Okay, forget about the disrespect. Facts don't care about your feelings. It turns out that every chromosome, every cell in Caitlyn Jenner's body, is male, with the exception of some of his sperm cells. It turns out that he still has all of his male appendages. How he feels on the inside is irrelevant to the question of his biological self."

"Ben Shapiro: I don't frankly give a damn what you think of me, since I've never heard of you. Andrew Neil: And I've never heard of you before I briefed myself for this, but that's not the issue. You haven't— Ben Shapiro: Then why the hell are you interviewing me, sir? Andrew Neil: It's an interesting book. But my point is, your book claims that society— Ben Shapiro: Well, it would be nice if you would quote it from time to time."

"And as far as the free speech situation, what I will say is that no company has the obligation to literally pay anyone. The Daily Wire is a publisher, it is not a platform. I have never called for Candace, or anyone else, for that matter, to be banned from YouTube, to be banned from X, to be banned from any platform. That is a different story, obviously, when it comes to any publisher. Any publisher gets to make decisions about what it wishes to purvey and not."

"So the only other reason you should ever have a conversation, or be friends, with anyone on the left is—and not even be friends—if you are in public in front of a large audience, and then your goal is to humiliate them as badly as possible. That is the goal of the conversation. The goal is not to convince the person. The goal is not to make friends with that person."

"So let's say, let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next hundred years—say, ten feet over the next hundred years—and it puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater. Which—let's say all of that happens. You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move?"

"But, what we can't do, is suggest, as the Bernie Sanders left does, that healthcare is an inalienable right and therefore you can put a gun to my wife's head—she's a doctor—and you can force her to provide care at any cost you wanna pay. You can't do that and hope to increase the supply of healthcare."

"You can't magically change your . You can't magically change your sex. You can't magically change your age. … Trump won the nomination because he was anti-left, not because of any political viewpoints, he was slapping people on the left and people on the right went, 'Yeah, those people need to be slapped!'"

"The left believes in a hierarchy of victimhood, if you are L.G.B.T.Q., then we suggest that you are very top of the victimhood hierarchy. You have been most in the United States and therefore your opinion must be taken with the most gravitas. … Black folks have been historically victimized in the United States, which of course, is true. But the idea that every black person now is being individually victimized by the United States is not true. … Way down at the bottom are white straight . Those are people whose opinions do not matter at all. Because those are the people who are the beneficiaries of the system. They don't get to talk about the system because they were the ones who built the system."

"The argument, I guess here, is that would you kill baby Hitler? And the truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn't Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby. What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler's house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That's the idea."

"Questioner: So, I figure you've probably heard this before, but C. S. Lewis makes the argument that because of Jesus' exclusive claims, that he is either a liar that intentionally led people astray, a lunatic that believed he was the son of God and he wasn't, or he is Lord. Would you put him in one of those categories, or would you put him in another, separate category? Ben Shapiro: So, I mean, because I'm a Jew, I'm just gonna, I mean… look, I'm a Jew, so obviously, for those who are not particularly versed in Judaism, the reason we are not Christians is because we don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah or a physical iteration of God. … So the option from within Judaism is to suggest that Jesus was actually a historical figure who was saying a lot of things which Jews would agree with, because if you read a lot of the New Testament, it, as you would expect, mimics a lot of things in the Old Testament; and that he was actually a political figure; and that the Romans crucified him because he was a political figure who was attempting to lead a rebellion against their tyranny. That's the Jewish historical claim about Jesus."

"Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass."

"Occupy Wall Street is just like the Arab Spring. Both are run by people who don't shower, hate American capitalism, and despise Israel."

"So Jason Collins is a hero because he's gay? Our standard for heroism has dropped quite a bit since Normandy."

"If you wear your pants below your butt, don't bend the brim of your cap, and have an EBT card, 0% chance you will ever be a success in life."

"would have turned 21 today if he hadn't taken a man's head and beaten it on the pavement before being shot."

"Your "safe spaces" should be renamed "fascist areas," you jackbooted intellectual weaklings."

"Hey, @SusanWojcicki, would love to discuss this with you. Do you think your employees should be cavalierly labeling those who militantly hate white supremacy "Nazis," and then shaping algorithms on the basis of such lies?"

"The New York Times … called him "the cool kid's philosopher" and a "brilliant polemicist," who "does not attack unfairly, stoke anger for the sake of it, or mischaracterize his opponents' positions.""

"Shapiro, a popular conservative pundit with half a million Youtube subscribers and 1.86 million Twitter followers, is known for his mantra "facts don't care about your feelings." … A New York Times profile called Shapiro "the cool kid's philosopher.""

"The Daily Wire was co-founded by one Ben Shapiro, perhaps the world's bestknown Orthodox Jew, and a good friend of mine."

"[T]he conservative pundit Ben Shapiro has referred to liberal Jews as "JINOs" and "bad Jews" who "vote Democrat" and therefore "undermine [the Jewish people] from within." … This is why Shapiro, himself a frequent target of anti-Semites, has drawn the interest of white-nationalist terrorists … he is saying what they want to hear."

"If Rush Limbaugh is someone your dad listens to on his car radio, Mr. Shapiro, 33, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is the cool kid's philosopher, dissecting arguments with a lawyer's skill and references to Aristotle."

"The Arab enmity for Jews and the state of Israel allows for no peace process. The time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless. ... Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution."