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Most authoritarians do not surrender power voluntarily.

Victor Davis Hanson

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Victor Davis Hanson
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 5
Classical Scholar
Historian
Journalist
University Teacher
Fowler
California
Authoritarians
Voluntarily
Surrender
Power

More quotes by Victor Davis Hanson

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I see a continuation of the populist outrage that prompted the Brexit and sparked the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Victor Davis Hanson
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Stalin and Mao killed over 80 million and did not make omelets despite the broken eggs.
Victor Davis Hanson
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It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.
Victor Davis Hanson
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.
Victor Davis Hanson
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Any time the Western way of war can be unleashed on an enemy stupid enough to enter its arena, victory is assured.
Victor Davis Hanson
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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
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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