Charlie Kirk > Quotes

“Never give up, never surrender, and always go for the win.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Greatness, on the other hand, requires the liberty and the drive to make the most of yourself.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Only in America could a President achieve the lowest ever black and Hispanic unemployment, have black business startups skyrocket 400%, see wages go up for black workers, advocate for prison reform, pardon wrongfully convicted people of color, and still be called a racist”
― Charlie Kirk, Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters

“Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?”
― Charlie Kirk

“I can’t stand the word empathy actually. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy I prefer more than empathy.”
― Charlie Kirk

“Socialism cannot survive when people are free to think for themselves, and America will never be a socialist country.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“I am writing this book as a young man who quite deliberately has chosen to commit my still early life to fighting to restore, perhaps finish building, an America that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers.”
― Charlie Kirk, Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations

“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that—it does a lot of damage. But it is very effective when it comes to politics. When Bill Clinton said, 'I feel your pain,' that was a brilliant political move. It was total nonsense, but it worked. I prefer sympathy. Sympathy is a much better word. Sympathy is saying, 'I’m sorry for what you’re going through, I’m going to try to help you.' Empathy is like, 'I’m going to become you, I’m going to feel exactly what you’re feeling.' It’s impossible, it’s narcissistic, and it’s destructive.”
― Charlie Kirk

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost; unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year. So that we can have our Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights.”
― Charlie Kirk

“Somebody said President Obama is much more popular in Germany than President Trump—he should be,” added Trump in his TPUSA speech. “If I start getting higher poll numbers in Europe, I’m doing something wrong.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Language control and political correctness have become the modern-day crossbow for Team Left and they are wielding their weaponry without conscience.”
― Charlie Kirk, Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations

“That viciousness—the sense of a revolution as a sort of purifying fire—is a zeal rarely seen in US history or British history, unless one counts the current fervor of the left’s so-called social justice warriors, who do sometimes beat, egg, or Molotov-cocktail their political enemies, though for now they more often just strive to purge their enemies from social media platforms and campus speaking engagements.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Donald Trump has always been a builder, from hotels to casinos to golf courses—Barack Obama was a community organizer who gave impressive speeches. However, one of the least eloquent points that President Obama made during a speech was his infamous line “You didn’t build that.” It’s no surprise that President Trump understands that businesses and growth are good for the economy and create jobs, while President Obama focused on the government as the solution.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Never give up. Never surrender. Always go for the win.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Protecting individual liberty from the tyrannical forces of government is the idea our nation was built upon. It is the only way to protect the individual’s rights, the family, local churches and schools, and other groups who can’t fight back themselves. Be skeptical of everything, especially your government. Ask questions, fight for your rights, and never surrender.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“You will never live in a society, when you have an armed citizenry, and you won't have a single gun death. That's nonsense, it's drivel. But I -I -I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have 2nd amendment to protect our other God given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
― Charlie Kirk

“I can't stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics.”
― Charlie Kirk

“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term, and it does a lot of damage. I much prefer the word compassion, and I much prefer the word sympathy. Empathy is where you try to feel someone’s pain and sorrows as if they’re your own. Compassion allows for understanding. I prefer the word sympathy, because politics has weaponized empathy.”
― Charlie Kirk

“The Obamas don’t seem too worried about the problem now that they’re out of the White House and in mid-2019 bought a $15 million mansion right on the edge of a very flat stretch of Martha’s Vineyard beachfront.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“We have been tirelessly fighting against the well-oiled machinery of “Team Left” and we have been taking them on aggressively at every turn. We fight them with their own tactics and we fight them with new ones they haven’t before seen. Mostly what we are trying to do is to move away from the apologies and counterpunches commonly associated with Team Right and hit preemptively and hit hard.”
― Charlie Kirk, Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations

“She also defended law enforcement officials who got convictions by withholding evidence or falsifying confessions. It is terrifying to think that about an eighth of the US prison population lives in a state with such a coldly bureaucratic conception of justice. (She may have had coldly careerist notions about sex back in the ’90s as well, since she notoriously slept with San Francisco assembly speaker Willie Brown, who was still married at the time, as he appointed her to a series of well-paid city positions.)”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“do not go out of my way to make enemies—and I have great respect for the long line of conservative thinkers who have made my tentative contribution to politics possible—but sometimes the most vicious opposition to me, to Turning Point USA, and to Trump himself has come from the right, not the left. The left, after all, has an exciting new enemy to fight in the Trump era. Many on the pre-Trump right need to rethink their lives and ask if they still have a purpose. Most do, but some have to confess they were going about things entirely the wrong way, maybe even enjoying the endless stalemate between right and left, not really holding out any realistic hope of winning or causing change.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“The smallest units of society—the individual, the family, the small business, the little towns, the local church and PTA—need to be protected with everything we’ve got.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“you are trying to shut them up because you disagree with them, then you are an intellectual midget.”
― Charlie Kirk, Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters

“offer these stats (some of the many such facts I like to share on my Twitter feed and podcast): Two hundred years ago, 84% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, 90% don’t. 83% didn’t have a basic education. Today, 86% do. 1% lived in a democracy. Today just 44% don’t. The child mortality rate was 43%. Today, it’s 4%. All thanks to the free market socialists want to destroy. If anything, economic growth rates and progress have slowed in the past few decades as the welfare state, to which the socialists give all the credit for such advances, grew. The new socialists and Democrats steadfastly ignore these facts. And it is this delusion that makes the MAGA Doctrine more important than ever.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Be skeptical of everything”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Hanson sees a similar desire to boost national morale while also getting the biggest bang for your cautiously spent buck (or your solidus, in the case of the Byzantine Empire) in many great leaders of the past, including Pericles, Alexander the Great, Justinian’s predecessors Augustus and Constantine, the later Holy Roman Emperors Charlemagne and Joseph II, Queen Elizabeth I and Churchill of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Abraham Lincoln. They were important not just because of military victories, argues Hanson. They shared a similar nationalist conviction: “They have a historical sense that decline is not a matter of exhaustion of natural resources, or it’s not predicated on enemies over the next hill. Usually, it’s internal.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“But the two parties were never quite literally opposites in their philosophies. The old Democrat formula, ideally stated, was something like: a big welfare and regulatory state combined with an American military subordinated to big international alliances and treaty organizations. The old Republican formula, ideally stated, was something like: free trade, big business, opposition to welfare, legislation defending traditional morality (such as pushing for pro-life measures when possible), plus never-ending military engagements overseas, with every dictator around the world due to become our fighting foe eventually.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“It’s not so crazy—it just isn’t necessarily as objective an accounting of the costs as would be made in a pure free market, where you had to pay for the land where pipelines sit with your own money, defend pipelines in trouble spots with your own gun, and fight foreign dictators with your own mercenary army. If you’re willing to do all that—without violating human rights in those countries—more power to you, no pun intended.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

“Ask yourself whether you can distinguish between the foreign policies of Hillary Clinton and the late John McCain. Both advocated toppling governments around the world. Both backed the Iraq War. Both were aghast at the election of Donald Trump, who had said for decades that wars are a terrible waste of lives and money.”
― Charlie Kirk, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future