Quote

The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.

Mark Steyn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Steyn
Age: 64
Born: 1959
Born: December 8
Film Critic
Journalist
Music Critic
Pundit
Writer
City of Toronto
Basic
Conservative
Behavior
Principles
Reward
Rewards

More quotes by 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
The essence of a government health care system - for people who have never lived under it and don't know - is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America.
Mark Steyn
Image
Appeasement is a vote to live in the present tense, to hold the comforts of the moment.
Mark Steyn
Image
The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.
Mark Steyn
Image
Our leadership class's real accomplishment is résumé padding.
Mark Steyn
Image
CNN? Oh, that's that network with Larry King, who, like the Son of Sam, is a native of Brooklyn. Used to be owned by Ted Turner, who, like the Cincinnati Strangler, is a native of Cincinnati. Now part of Time Warner, founded by the Warner Brothers, the oldest of whom, Harry Warner, like many Auschwitz guards, was a native of Poland.
Mark Steyn
Image
Absolute welfare corrupts absolutely.
Mark Steyn
Image
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
Image
[To] the progressive mind, the very concept of the enemy is obsolescent: there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated.
Mark Steyn
Image
We're on the brink of a world in which the wealthiest nations, from Canada to Norway to Japan, can barely project meaningful force to their own borders while the nickel 'n' dime basket-cases go nuclear.
Mark Steyn
Image
The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.
Mark Steyn
Image
The Western front is the important one in this war - the intersection between Islam and a liberal democratic tradition so mired in self-loathing it would rather destroy our civilization just to demonstrate its multicultural bona fides.
Mark Steyn
Image
Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.
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
Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense: the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the government.
Mark Steyn
Image
When is the Democratic Party going to apologize for being the biggest slave-holding-supporting institution on the planet and sticking with racism for the century after the abolition of slavery?
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
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
LBJ held up Detroit as a model of what the Great Society could accomplish. He was right.
Mark Steyn
Image
We are the source of our problems not mysterious sinister foreigners overseas.
Mark Steyn