Richard Brookhiser

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables.…

— Richard Brookhiser

Only the stupefying ignorance of young women prevents them from comprehending the stupefying emptiness of the men who cluster round them.

— Richard Brookhiser

The young women who attract so much attention never change: They are all stupid. They have at best only the crudest notions…

— Richard Brookhiser

Madison lived in his head and public speaking did not come naturally to him.

— Richard Brookhiser

The Dutch practice euthanasia so briskly that they will kill themselves even before the Islamists get around to it.

— Richard Brookhiser

Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries.

— Richard Brookhiser

“The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.”

— Richard Brookhiser

Aaron Burr was like a new refrigerator. He was bright, cold and empty.

— Richard Brookhiser

Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled…

— Richard Brookhiser

Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it -- no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are…

— Richard Brookhiser

Depression manifests itself in a lack of will.

— Richard Brookhiser

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

— Richard Brookhiser

[Washington had won] a war for independence and then gone home. [He embodied] the legend of the Roman who returned to his…

— Richard Brookhiser

One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

— Richard Brookhiser

“Most principles are limp until they are tested.”

— Richard Brookhiser