Quote

Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.

Mark Steyn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Steyn
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: December 8
Film Critic
Journalist
Music Critic
Pundit
Writer
City of Toronto
Self
Erode
Citizenry
Reliance
Welfare
Europe
State
Bankrupting
Culture
Erodes
States
Resourcefulness

More quotes by Mark Steyn

Image
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you get away from it? Improvise.
Mark Steyn
Image
Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path.
Mark Steyn
Image
General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary.
Mark Steyn
Image
The state of our civilization manifests itself both in the non-problems that terrify us beyond all reason - rising sea levels - and in the real problems we pay no heed to [population decline]...In reality, much of the planet will be uninhabited long before it's uninhabitable
Mark Steyn
Image
It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.
Mark Steyn
Image
There is no conceivable amount of money worth telling the world that you were beaten up by Liza Minnelli.
Mark Steyn
Image
The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.
Mark Steyn
Image
There may be many things wrong with the United States but only a blind fool who hasn't been paying attention for the last twenty years would hold up Europe as the alternative.
Mark Steyn
Image
The progressive Left can be in favor of Big Government or population control but not both. The mutual incompatibility is about to plunge Europe into societal collapse. There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital - and that's before anyone invented unsustainable welfare systems.
Mark Steyn
Image
Can't spell, can't spot fake Shakespeare, can't tell one wacky foreigner from another: it's increasingly obvious that Barbra is some deep sleeper planted by the Republicans to discredit the very concept of activist celebrities. Poor old Democrats, in thrall to her fundraising: people who need Barbra are the unluckiest people in the world.
Mark Steyn
Image
After all, [female genital mutilation is] a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, a lot of us hapless western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.
Mark Steyn
Image
In Europe, nothing is certain except death and welfare, and why let the former get in the way of the latter?
Mark Steyn
Image
The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.
Mark Steyn
Image
Last month, 80,000 Americans signed on to new jobs, but 85,000 Americas signed on for Social Security disability checks. Most of these people are not 'disabled' as that term is generally understood. Rather, it's the U.S. economy that's disabled, and thus Obama incentivizes dependency.
Mark Steyn
Image
Jokes are one of the things that bind the culture. If you can't have jokes about everybody in society and if one group is hedged off and protected then that group can never truly be integrated.
Mark Steyn
Image
The Democratic Party is uniquely virulently racist and pro-slavery to a degree unseen anywhere in the English-speaking world!
Mark Steyn
Image
Absolute welfare corrupts absolutely.
Mark Steyn
Image
Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship.
Mark Steyn
Image
Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do?
Mark Steyn
Image
If gun control bore any relation to homicide rates, Washington, DC would be the safest place in the country.
Mark Steyn