Facts don't care about your feelings.

Benjamin Aaron "Ben" Shapiro (born 15 January 1984, is an American conservative political commentator, nationally syndicated columnist, author, radio talk show host, and attorney.

Quotes

  • If you pay tuition, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If you pay taxes, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda. If your child majors in English, you're sponsoring the militant homosexual agenda.
If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.
  • The Arab enmity for Jews and the state of Israel allows for no peace process. The time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless. [...] Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution.
  • President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms—not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually.

2011

The Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs).
  • Is Donald Trump the best Republican candidate for president out there? It would be tough to argue otherwise. He's got all the makings of a breakout star; he's got bravado and the cash to back it up.
  • The answer is deceptively simple: The Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch Schindler's List; they visit temple on Yom Kippur—sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming.
    • "Jews in Name Only", Townhall.com, 25 May 2011 
    • This is a pun on the term RINO, which stands for "Republican In Name Only".

2013–2014

  • There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood who feel the obligation—they have a perverse leftist view of history, pushed by the Soviet Union, that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity. And therefore, the cure for intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.
There certainly is a war on Christianity. It's coming from some people who are secular Jews.
  • As a general matter, the left's favorite three lines of attack are (1) you're stupid; (2) you're mean; (3) you're corrupt. Sarah Palin is supposedly stupid; Mitt Romney is supposedly mean; Dick Cheney is supposedly corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in.
    • How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument, Sherman Oaks: David Horowitz Freedom Center, 16 April 2014 

2015

  • Facts don't care about your feelings.
  • So the only other reason you should ever have a conversation, or be friends, with anyone on the left is—and not even be friends—if you are in public in front of a large audience, and then your goal is to humiliate them as badly as possible. That is the goal of the conversation, the goal is not to convince the person, the goal is not to make friends with that person.

2016

  • This is a clarifying election. We've learned that certain media members were willing to sell out long-held principles for ratings. We've learned that certain conservative voters were willing to let conservatism go by the wayside to hero worship a godking. Now we're learning that the Republican leadership is everything we thought they were. We will remember their names. It's time for a new brand of conservative leadership—and those who kowtow to Trump shouldn't be a part of it.

Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives? (December 5, 2016)

Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives?, The Daily Wire (December 5, 2016)
  • Just because the left has ignored and disparaged truth for years is no excuse for the right to do so as well. And unfortunately, truth-free politics seems to be growing exponentially on the right.
  • This is pure ends-justify-the-means logic. And the means are pushing falsehood. The notion here seems to be that Trump is helping America avoid perdition, and thus must be given leeway to lie; if we didn’t allow him to lie, the left would continue to do so, and then they’d win and drive us straight into Hell. But that suggests that truth no longer has the capacity to drive voters or Americans. If that’s true, republicanism is finished as a principle—if we can only lie to voters to get them to vote for us, that undermines the decency of republicanism altogether.
  • Conservatives used to care too much about values and republicanism to buy ends-justify-the-means logic. But it increasingly appears that political expedience now outweighs basic morality. At least one side of the political spectrum seemed to care about truth. Now both sides are competing to see who can race to the bottom fastest.

2017

  • So let's say, let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next hundred years—say, ten feet over the next hundred years—and it puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater. Which—let's say all of that happens. You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move?
    • "Ben Shapiro VS Climate Change", YouTube, 2017-01-08, 5:37
    • Shapiro does not explain who people would sell their homes to in such a scenario, i.e., who would be interested in buying an underwater house.
  • But, what we can't do, is suggest, as the Bernie Sanders left does, that healthcare is an inalienable right and therefore you can put a gun to my wife's head—she's a doctor—and you can force her to provide care at any cost you wanna pay. You can't do that and hope to increase the supply of healthcare.

2018

  • If tyranny is going to come in the United States, it's going to come from people who are so fearful of the liberty of Americans, that they believe that the government should shut down all sorts of freedoms that we hold dear.
  • Very often these days, we hear about the wonderful richness of the international community. Americans are chastised for failing to go along with the international community on climate change; failing to follow the consensus of the international community on health care; failing to mirror the priorities of the international community in foreign policy.
    But here's the reality: There is no international community. There is merely a group of states motivated by self-interest. Sometimes those self-interests overlap. Other times they don't. But let's not pretend that the international community somehow maintains a sort of collective moral standing merely by dint of numbers. In fact, precisely the opposite is often true.
    ..
    Hamas isn't hiding the ball. It is evil. It celebrates evil. It pays terrorists to commit acts of evil. But the international community isn't hiding the ball either when its members refuse to condemn terrorism as terrorism when it is directed against disfavored members of the international community.

2019

  • The argument, I guess here, is that would you kill baby Hitler? And the truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn't Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby. What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler's house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That's the idea.
    • 2019 March for Life, 2019-01-18
  • Here's the truth: Radical Islam is dangerous. The Islamic world has a serious problem with radical Islam. And large swaths of the Muslim world are, in fact, hostile to Western views on matters ranging from freedom of speech to women's rights.
  • So, what would tempt the New York Times to print an illustration directly from the mind of Julius Streicher? The fact that the Times, like many of today's mainstream media outlets, has been completely and utterly willing to cover for and, indeed, engage in anti-Semitism, so long as it is disguised as anti-Zionism.
    ..
    Back in 2015, the New York Times printed a list of lawmakers who voted against the anti-Israel Iran deal—listing them by the percentage of Jews in their districts and noting which ones were Jewish themselves. Back in 2014, the public editor of the newspaper, Margaret Sullivan, advised reporters to cover the Palestinians as "more than just victims," thanks to the paper's insanely one-sided coverage.
    ...
    The mainstream Left has engaged in self-flattering blindness when it comes to Jew-hatred. And all too often, that blindness veers into outright anti-Semitism.
  • Ben Shapiro: You know, honestly, this is a giant waste of time, in the sense that the entire interview is designed for you to shout slogans or old things that I've said at me. I don't see how this forwards the debate. You talk about undermining the public discourse. It seems to me that simply going through and finding lone things that sound bad out of context, and then hitting people with them, is a way for you to make a quick buck on BBC off the fact that I'm popular and no one has ever heard of you.

    Andrew Neil: There are not many bucks to be made on the BBC, unlike American broadcasts, Mr. Shapiro.

"It's an interesting book." "Well, it would be nice if you would quote it from time to time."
  • Andrew Neil: Why don't you just try and answer the questions?

    Ben Shapiro: I don't frankly give a damn what you think of me, since I've never heard of you.

    Andrew Neil: And I've never heard of you before I briefed myself for this, but that's not the issue. You haven't—

    Ben Shapiro: Then why the hell are you interviewing me, sir?

    Andrew Neil: It's an interesting book. But my point is, your book claims that society—

    Ben Shapiro: Well, it would be nice if you would quote it from time to time.

    Andrew Neil: Well, actually, I've done so several times, and I'm about to do so again, if you would let me just finish the question. Your book claims that—

    Ben Shapiro: Frankly, I don't think that—you know what? Honestly—honestly, sir—

    Andrew Neil: —society is turning its back on Judeo-Christian values. What are the values it's turning its back on?

    Ben Shapiro: You know, I'm not inclined to continue in an interview with a person as badly motivated as you, as an interviewer. So I think we're done here. I appreciate your time, sir. Thank you so much.

    Andrew Neil: All right. Well, thank you for your time, and for showing that anger is not part of American political discourse. Now, Mr. Shapiro, we'll say goodbye.

  • A pluralistic democracy requires three factors to function: a shared cultural space; a shared belief in key ideas, largely embedded in the Constitution; and a shared willingness to leave one another alone. As each component erodes, so, too, does the possibility of a united country.
  • Okay, well, the fact is that if you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough. That'd be a you problem.
    • "Practicality vs. Moral Character?", The Ben Shapiro Show (839): 45:21, 4 August 2019 
    • Responding to Kamala Harris's assertion, "In our America, we must agree nobody should have to work more than one job to have a roof over their head and food on the table."
  • They're talking about this dumb story that President Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes. Which, by the way, I don't care whether it does anything, I just think it sounds cool. I mean, what if there are sharks in the hurricanes? What if it's a sharknado? What then, guys? Have you thought about that? Just the idea—any time you're talking about nuking a random thing that's not really going to hurt anybody, I'll admit, the 13-year-old boy in me is kinda for it.
  • Meanwhile, the polarization of the American public continues apace with wokescolds doing their best to ruin every aspect of American life. I'm very excited that Merriam-Webster Dictionary has now added the non-binary pronoun they to the dictionary. Because when I look at a book for definitions of words, what I want is a made-up definition of a word that has never been used this way in all of human history: a plural noun, used as a singular noun, to refer to a singular gender. We're gonna use a plural noun, and Merriam-Webster is gonna go along with this, which just demonstrates once and for all that logic has gone out the window. People are tailoring science to meet politically correct demands, people are tailoring language to meet politically correct demands.

2022

The Romans crucified him because he was a political figure who was attempting to lead a rebellion against their tyranny.

  • Questioner: Hey Ben, I am Will. I have a religious question for you. So, I figure you've probably heard this before, but C. S. Lewis makes the argument that because of Jesus' exclusive claims, that he is either a liar that intentionally led people astray, a lunatic that believed he was the son of God and he wasn't, or he is Lord. Would you put him in one of those categories, or would you put him in another, separate category?

    Ben Shapiro: So, I mean, because I'm a Jew, I'm just gonna, I mean … look, I'm a Jew, so obviously, for those who are not particularly versed in Judaism, the reason we are not Christians is because we don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah or a physical iteration of God. So the answer that is typically given here is that there is a fourth option, which is the belief, in Judaism, that the Gospels are unverifiable and that they don't relate Jesus' own self-perception. So I've said this before: that it is not that Jesus was a liar or that he was a lunatic, it's that in Judaism, we don't actually believe that a lot of the claims that Jesus makes in the Gospels jive well with what Jews even at the time would have claimed. Which is actually the claim that Christianity makes: Christianity also makes the claim that Jesus is making transformative claims that would have existed outside of Judaism. So obviously, if you are a Jew, and you see those claims made, you're like, "No Jew would have made that sort of claim. That's a weird claim to make." Christians are like, "Right. No Jew would have made that sort of claim, because he's God." So the option from within Judaism is to suggest that Jesus was actually a historical figure who was saying a lot of things which Jews would agree with, because if you read a lot of the New Testament, it, as you would expect, mimics a lot of things in the Old Testament; and that he was actually a political figure; and that the Romans crucified him because he was a political figure who was attempting to lead a rebellion against their tyranny. That's the Jewish historical claim about Jesus. Now, again, I'm not saying that Christians agree with that. They don't. This is why I am Jewish, this is why you are Christian.

Quotes about Shapiro

  • It is entirely possible that my WND colleague [Ben Shapiro] has a perfectly good reason for not serving his country in its moment of need. For all I know, he may have a weak heart, a wooden leg, a predilection for San Francisco bathhouse sex or some other condition that prevents him from joining the military. But devoting two columns to criticizing a single word [Chickenhawk] strikes me as a lady protesting a bit too much.
  • While his peers are dodging sniper bullets and IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Shapiro is bravely urging them to invade five more countries in the establishment of global empire from the safety of his Harvard dorm room.
  • According to his supporters, and even many who might not support him, Ben Shapiro loves facts. Why? Well, because he says he loves facts. He’s not basing his assertions on feelings, and we know this because he says that he isn’t. [...] By insisting on this interpretation of his own character, over and over, buoyed by the idolatrous support of his loyal fans and the snarky titles of his clickbait videos, Shapiro conjures into being an image of himself as The Rational Man. Say the magic words enough times, and the spell will be cast over your audience.
  • According to the Times, there is a wide gulf between Trump/Yiannopoulos-style vulgar conservatism and Shapiro-style Logical conservatism, but I just am not sure that I see in “Go to hell, you communist piece of garbage” the kind of “polemical brilliance” that Shapiro is reputed to demonstrate.
  • It’s amusing that Shapiro can see Gazan children swimming in sewage and think “Wow, Arabs must just really have a thing for sewage,” a train of reasoning roughly akin to “Wow, Haitians must really love dying in earthquakes, since a lot of them seem to have done it.”
  • Again, it may just be my failure to understand Facts and Logic, but I am having trouble understanding how population-level generalizations about the moral characteristics of particular ethnic groups can be anything other than bigotry.
  • Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young.

    In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like "feminism is cancer." But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump.

Unsourced quotes


  • Ben Shapiro is a virulent antisemite who has spent his career "upping his Jewish identity" in order to get away with spouting Neo-Nazi talking points vilifying American Jews.
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