Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason QUOTES

1 " Harvard University has chosen to make it harder for Asian applicants to be accepted into the university because they outperform their peers. So yes, systemic racism is real . . . at America’s top university. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

2 " Think about yourself right now. Do you represent all white people, or black people, or straight people, or gay people? No, of course not. You only represent yourself. Segregating Americans into identity groups—the very essence of bigotry—has been fully embraced by modern progressivism, which has absolutely nothing to do with classical liberalism. Progressivism has traded a love of individual rights for paternalistic, insincere concern for the collective. It judges people based upon their skin color, gender, and sexuality, thus imagining them as competitors in an Oppression Olympics in which victimhood is virtue. "

― Dave Rubin, , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

3 " When we fail to live a life outside politics, we become a slave to it. While it’s certainly important to be aware of all the issues I’ve discussed here, it’s way more important to live a well-rounded, fully-realized life that’s regularly removed from all the drama.
In order to do this, we must learn to distinguish between being politically engaged and politically obsessed. "

― Dave Rubin, , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

4 " If we’re going to confront reality honestly, then nothing can be off-limits. Our power structures, our political leaders, and our religious institutions all must be fair game in a free society. There’s a fine line when jokes and mockery become cruel and pointless, but this is the line comedians have toed since the beginning of time. We must relentlessly defend their ability not only to push our limits but also to occasionally trip over the line into sacrilege and controversy. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

5 " Exhibit A: I’m guessing you’re no fan of socialism, which was a founding principle of the Nazi movement. The name “Nazi” is an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which most of today’s Democrat socialists conveniently forget. Actually, that’s an understatement. These people don’t just overlook this truth, they’ve totally rewritten history on the matter. These days, Nazism gets associated with conservatism at the drop of a hat, but historically it stems from the left. Adolf Hitler? An art-loving vegetarian who seized power by wooing voters away from Germany’s Social Democrat and communist parties. Italy’s Benito Mussolini? Raised on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital before starting his career as a left-wing journalist and, later, implementing a deadly fascist regime. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

6 " Don’t Burn This Book may not usher in world peace, balance the national debt, or improve your sex life, but while those are worthy pursuits, that wasn’t my goal. Instead, I want to champion the values that keep people safe, sane, and free. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

7 " Researchers at the University of Missouri had found a “gender equality paradox” when they studied 475,000 teenagers across the globe. They noted that hyperegalitarian countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden had a smaller percentage of female STEM graduates than countries such as Albania and Algeria, which are considered less advanced "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

8 " Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” In other words, today’s progressives have now become the sexists and racists they’ve claimed to hate. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

9 " I’ve reluctantly reached after years of watching my old “team” transform into a baying mob of hysterical puritans—a feral gang that sows division through identity politics and encourages societal tribes to rank themselves in a pecking order of “oppression. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

10 " This is because outward virtue signaling is separate from being a considerate, moral person. Whereas the latter is central for common decency (and is something we should all strive for), the former is just a display of faux morality. One that’s designed to offer protection from the mob ever turning on them. It’s a protection racket—a form of insurance. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

11 " The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.” T "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

12 " Suddenly, out of nowhere, rationalizing Islamic terror had become a progressive position. According to progressives, it was another 2-D argument: brown people = good, white people = bad. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

13 " It’s no coincidence that social justice warriors are frequently out of shape, poorly dressed, and have messy hair, along with their overall disheveled appearance. If some dress for success, they dress for failure. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

14 " Elder was right and he damn well knew it. “The biggest burden that black people have is being raised without fathers,” he declared. “A black kid raised without a dad is five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in jail. When I hear people tell me about systemic racism or unconscious racism I always say ‘give me an example.’ And almost nobody can do it. I give the facts . . . and [according to left-wingers] the facts are racist. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

15 " Free-thinking is the new counterculture, which makes it cutting-edge and subversive, like punk rock or hip-hop in the early 1980s. It’s on the periphery where all the sexy, rebellious, and exciting stuff happens, not the mainstream center left, which has become like an R-rated movie stripped down to PG for minimum offense. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

16 " Trust me, beaut fades, but dumb is forever. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

17 " Worse still, they implement all of these things with brute force: violence, censorship, character assassination, smear campaigns, doxing, trolling, deplatforming, and online witch hunts. Tricks that are deliberately designed to leave people down and out. Ideally, jobless and without the resources to push back. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

18 " So yes, saying “I don’t know” is a good thing. Bullshitting your way through life is not dignified and over time it can never really work. Eventually people see through it and then are very likely to second-guess everything else you say going forward. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

19 " Free-thinking is the new counterculture, which makes it cutting-edge and subversive, like punk rock or hip-hop in the early 1980s. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

20 " I’m a free-speech absolutist. Yes, even when it comes to opinions I find abhorrent. In fact, specifically when it comes to those opinions. The only exceptions to this rule have already been specified by the Supreme Court of the United States: calling for direct violence against a person or specific group, yelling “fire” in a crowded theater (with the intent to incite iminent lawless action), and defaming somebody through libel or slander. Everything else should get a free pass, every single time. No exceptions, ever. "

― , Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason