Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Victor Davis Hanson
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 5
Classical Scholar
Historian
Journalist
University Teacher
Fowler
California
Civilization
Shadows
Instead
Guarantees
Effort
Status
Working
Efforts
Often
Granted
Herculean
Take
Chaos
Ridiculed
Easily
Hides
Shadow
Guarantee

More quotes by Victor Davis Hanson

Image
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
Image
After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama's faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
Behind every liberal philanthropist fortune is a huge capitalist score. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford now to be liberal - an expensive indulgence - because in their early incarnations they were no-holds-barred capitalists who made lots of enemies conducting business without mercy and in search of pure profit.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
Almost every key indicator of the current economy - unemployment, deficits, housing, energy - argues that Obama's reactionary all-powerful statist approach has only made things far worse.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
Stalin and Mao killed over 80 million and did not make omelets despite the broken eggs.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
Racial inequality has gotten worse in the last years because any time you have a moribund economy, the people who historically have had more problems getting jobs have suffered. And that, I think, is triggering a lot of the animosity.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
Politicians in their hubris who believe they can ignore debt or wish it away are sorely disappointed - as we see now with the plummeting approval ratings of both the administration and Congress.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
[People] are alike in a sense that the Bernie Sanders anger at Hillary Clinton was that she was a so-called progressive and yet had managed to make $125 million.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
I'm kind of old-fashioned because I was born and live in the same house for six generations.
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
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
Image
So why, after prior successes, did Obama's race/class/gender attack finally sputter out like the French at Waterloo?
Victor Davis Hanson
Image
In the case of [Donald] Trump, he was able to tell people that elites live in gated communities, where they have walls around their home.
Victor Davis Hanson