Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Rush Limbaugh

American Radio Talk Show Host, Political Commentator and Author

"Compassion is no substitute for justice."

"No nation ever taxed itself into prosperity."

"Poverty is not the root cause of crime."

"A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren't necessary. They don't need men in order to be happy. They certainly don't want males to be able to exercise any control over them. Abortion is the ultimate symbol of women's emancipation from the power and influence of men."

"Character matters; leadership descends from character."

"Can't take sides? — — —! These were American journalists, and they can't take sides? That attitude illustrates the haughty arrogance of people in the news business."

"And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge."

"After the Republican Party did everything that Colin Powell says it needs to do to grow, and nominated the very kind of candidate he wanted in 2008, what did Powell do? He endorsed Obama! So according to the Drive-Bys and David Gergen, Republicans should let somebody who campaigned and voted for Obama, tell us how to build our party."

"Being stuck is a position few of us like. We want something new but cannot let go of the old - old ideas, beliefs, habits, even thoughts. We are out of contact with our own genius. Sometimes we know we are stuck; sometimes we don't. In both cases we have to DO something."

"Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom."

"Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream."

"From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It's just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society."

"Government stimulates the democrat party."

"Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the United States today than we did at the time the Constitution was written?"

"Did you know that the White House drug test is multiple choice?"

"Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain, this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on loan from . . . God. Rush Limbaugh. A man. A legend. A way of life."

"Folks, the most insidious part of this whole health care scheme is that all of these vast medical expenditures will become nothing more than government budget items. We individuals will no longer exist. The relationship between a government and citizen will change forever."

"I don't need equal time, I am equal time!"

"He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, "Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service." You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into."

"I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion. There are 1.5 million abortions a year, and some feminists almost seem to celebrate that figure. There are not many of them, but they deserve to be called feminazis."

"I reject the notion that America is in a well-deserved decline, that she and her citizens are unexceptional. I do not believe America is the problem in the world. I believe America is the solution to the world's problems."

"I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed."

"If the word of how they're being treated keeps getting out, we're going to have al-Qaeda people surrendering all over the world trying to get in place."

"If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation."

"It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-Marxist communists."

"I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?"

"Let me tell you who we conservatives are: we love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims."

"If you commit a crime, you're guilty."

"Most people's historical perspective begins with the day of their birth."

"It's sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun."

"Militant feminists are pro-choice because it's their ultimate avenue of power over men. And believe me, to them it is a question of power. It is their attempt to impose their will on the rest of society, particularly on men."

"Let's remember one thing, folks, while we go forward. Not one Republican voted for this bailout. Remember way back in the fall, not one Republican voted for the TARP bailout, and this was why."

"Liberal Democrats are inexorably opposed to tax cuts, because tax cuts give people more power, and take away from the role of government."

"Nationalizing businesses, nationalizing banks, is not a solution for the democratic party, it's the objective."

"Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about [every] issue... Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I'm not making this up."

"None of what Barack Obama is doing or wants to do to this country is anything the rest of the world hasn't seen before and already failed at."

"Obama had the audacity to say, 'I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.' Ladies and gentlemen, torture in the United States has always been illegal."

"Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Our nation was created in ways that allow human potential to prosper, and it created the greatest nation for people in the history of humanity. Now Obama is dismantling it, because he has no appreciation for our greatness. In fact, he resents it. He blames this country for whatever evils he sees around the world."

"Obama is a statist. He's an authoritarian. He doesn't want to govern; he wants to rule."

"So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far-left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?"

"Police and firefighters are great, but they don't create wealth. They protect it. That's crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don't create the wealth themselves."

"So what is so strange about saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to reconstruct and reform this nation so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed."

"The Los Angeles riots were not caused by the Rodney King verdict. The Los Angeles riots were caused by rioters."

"The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them?"

"The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they're not the enemy. They're the people that hire you. They're the people that are going to give you a job."

"The last thing they want is a revitalized economy now. I'm not saying the Democrats don't want a strong economy. Don't misunderstand. They just don't want it now."

"Styrofoam and plastic milk jugs are biodegradable! Do you know what isn't biodegradable? Paper!"

"The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope."

"The dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and we have a replay of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That's that's the objective here."