Rush always said, ‘History repeats itself.’ Now more than ever, we know Rush was always 99.8 percent right, according to recent polls! His brilliance on the radio is timeless. The page below will highlight favorite quotes and programs from over the years.
Rush Continues to Inspire
How Your Host Hears Music with a Cochlear Implant
RUSH: Here is Vaughan in Columbiana, Ohio. Great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush! How are you, sir?
RUSH: I’m doing well. Thank you much.
CALLER: Well, good. Mega dittos from a longtime listener since the early nineties. Hey, as I’m standing here lookin’ at the snow and contemplating the season, a question comes up that I could only ask you probably on Open Line Friday. So here goes. Back in the early or mid-nineties, you introduced your audience to Mannheim Steamroller, and I’ve amassed a collection of their Christmas music and just absolutely loved it. I’m about it year older than you, Rush, and, like you, I have come to acquire a fair amount of hearing loss.
Certainly nothing like you have, but I was able to mitigate it somewhat with conventional hearing aids that I’m able to control with a Bluetooth connection and that sort of thing. But it’s been evident over the years listening to your bumper music and the way you brought us Mannheim Steamroller and all that, that you’re a fan of good music. I’m wondering, with your cochlear implants, are you able to enjoy music at all like you used to be able to?
RUSH: Well, I can if it’s music that I knew before I lost my hearing.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So in the case of Mannheim Steamroller, the way it works is I’m actually not hearing it. My memory is supplying memories based on the audio stimulation that I am getting. That’s why I can only listen to music and recognize music that I knew before I lost my hearing. Music that I’ve never heard before all sounds the same note. I cannot distinguish a low-piano note from a high-piano note, for example. Violins, strings sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I need closed-captioning even to follow audio in a movie or TV show, because the music and the soundtrack will be so loud and distracting that without closed-captioning, I’ll never even hear 30% of what’s being said on any TV show.
But as to music, as long as you have your natural hearing and as long as it’s being amplified with hearing aids, you’re not gonna suffer anywhere near the type of loss of ability to enjoy music that somebody who has totally lost the their hearing will. You’ll still be able to hear it exactly as it was. You just may need to turn it up — and, depending on the nature of your hearing loss, you might lose the ability to hear certain frequencies high or low. But, again, your memory will take over. If it’s music you’re familiar with like Mannheim Steamroller, I predict that you’ll be able to get enough of it to thoroughly enjoy it like you always have.
CALLER: Hey, after hearing you describing the amount of hearing that you lost, you won’t hear me complain about mine. That’s a profound amount of hearing loss. I just have to tell you one quick instance and I’ll let you go. I vividly remember the first time you signed off… I think it was early Christmas Eve or the day or so before Christmas when you signed off the third hour and played Silent Night. That moved me to the point I had to pull off the road, and I want to thank you for that. So Merry Christmas, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Well, you bet. Thank you. Thanks, Vaughan. Mannheim Steamroller’s version of Silent Night is all instrumental, which is what makes it all the more powerful, the way Chip Davis and his gang have been able to take an instrumental piece of music — and, as it plays, increase the power in the perception of the listener. The crescendo of that tune is what jerks the tears. So we always tried to back time so it ended specifically and precisely right at the end of a break. It was — and it still is. It is a piece of music that has a profound impact on the people who have heard it or even if you’re hearing it for the first time. Silent Night, Mannheim Steamroller. It’s one of the first or second Christmas albums, CDs. But again, Vaughan, thank you much. I appreciate it.
“The founding of the country is something that every child deserves to know. The founding, the people behind it, what it took, why it’s so unique, what is unique about the United States. These things are not taught.”
– PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
2020 State of the Union Address
Rush always said, ‘History repeats itself.’ Now more than ever, we know Rush was always 99.9 percent right, according to recent polls! His brilliance on the radio is timeless. The page below will highlight favorite quotes and programs from over the years.
“The founding of the country is something that every child deserves to know. The founding, the people behind it, what it took, why it’s so unique, what is unique about the United States. These things are not taught.”
What Conservatives Wish for All People
The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 12, 2014
The core principle of conservatism is wanting the absolute best for the human race, and we understand that that is possible only with liberty and freedom. Liberty and freedom to be the best we can be. Liberty and freedom to be what we want to be, applied according to our ambitions and our desires.
AFTER 45 YEARS, CONSERVATIVES STILL HAVE A “RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY”
RUSH: Here is George in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Hey, I’m calling to tell you what I think is the most inspiring thing you’ve said on your program in 19 years. And that would be six years ago, when you lamented how so many people do not use the gifts that God gave them. And I gotta tell you, Rush, that inspired me to use a gift that I hadn’t used for a long time, and I thank you so much, but it strikes me that that really encapsulates everything you’ve been saying. You want the country and society to encourage its people to use the gifts that God gave them, and that’s what I called to tell you, Rush.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I remember it well. I’ve said it a number of times. You know, one of the ways of expressing it, I’ll try this again. There’s so many things that are misunderstood about people who engage in political discussions, because so much of politics is about arguing to win and to lose. And in politics, when you talk about people losing, there are negative consequences to that. But my fervent hope, and as a conservative — and I know I speak for every conservative when I say, we love everybody, and we want everybody to succeed. And that desire is really the foundation of every conservative economic and social belief.
We don’t want people to have to be dependent on people that really don’t care about them. We don’t want people to have to be dependent on people that are really not interested in them. We don’t want people to have to be dependent on people who are using them. We want people to experience the great things about achievement and accomplishment and success, because that’s how we have a great country. That is how we have a wonderful society.
Now, it’s obvious not everybody’s gonna be able to do it. Some people are never going to find what it is they’re good at. Some people simply are not gonna find what it is they want to do. And that’s always been somewhat disappointing because I was lucky. I found out really early in life. I was eight years old when I knew what I wanted to do, some form of it. I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old, and I have been nothing but dedicated to those desires.
And it’s true the old saw that if you’re doing what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. It sounds kind of cliched, but it really is true. And if more people had the good fortune of actually discovering their passion, their true passion, and if they can figure out a way to get paid for it, then they would know life and success and all kinds of happiness in ways that eludes them otherwise, and that’s what I wish for people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to continue on this vein for just a second. Maybe I can make a point that — now, I assume it’s understood, and oftentimes that’s a mistake, to expect that a core belief is understood, therefore you don’t need to express the core belief. And as I watch things, I’m beginning to think that there’s a lot misunderstanding about particularly conservative core beliefs.
Now, let’s take the conservative opposition to big government. A lot of people — and make no mistake about this — a lot of people think that the conservative opposition to big government is rooted in the fact that we want people to suffer. As strange and as impossible as that sounds, there are people who believe it. And of course nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that we, as conservatives, know that nobody is ever gonna come close to anywhere reaching their potential or enjoying life the best and most they can if they end up dependent on anything: parents, a political party, a government.
The core principle of conservatism is wanting the absolute best for the human race, and we understand that that is possible only with liberty and freedom. Liberty and freedom to be the best we can be. Liberty and freedom to be what we want to be, applied according to our ambitions and our desires. We realize that people’s lives are being stunted, their opportunity is being cut back and thwarted the more they are talked into depending on other people.
Now, in the process of trying to be the best you can be, in the process of using liberty and freedom to find out what it is you love and then to go attack it and do it, there’s going to be some pain. It’s not a smooth ride for anybody. There are ups and downs, and there are plenty of times where there are periods of no income, for example. What do you do then? All of these variables have to get factored in, but the core belief should never be thoroughly and totally shattered simply because there are interruptions in the journey.
We’re also realists, know that not everybody’s a self-starter and not everybody is gonna be the best at whatever it is they want to do. And we realize that not everybody’s gonna be figure out what they want to do, but it’s the effort and the desire to do so that is the key. And anything that thwarts that and replaces it with dependency, we think is destructive to people. And we love people. We don’t want things to be destructive to people. The thing about conservatism and pursuing your dreams, pursuing your desires, it’s hard. But oftentimes people don’t see the pain and the hard work; they only see the end result. They see a successful individual and not realize what it took to get there, what happened along the way, and want immediate gratification, want to live like that, be like that, whatever it is, as quickly as possible.
So there’s a constant battle. We’re always at war with people who tell us that our version of achieving a great society is thwarted because the people we’re up against don’t really believe people are capable of it. Your average leftist, socialist, communist Democrat views average people with contempt. We don’t. We view average people as untapped potential. Our desire is to get as many obstacles out of their way as possible. We want everybody to succeed, however they define it. But it’s not Pollyannish, and it’s not rose-colored glasses.
We don’t believe everybody can be Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. We don’t believe that at all. But we do believe in liberty and freedom and human potential and all of these things coming together equaling and resulting in an absolutely great country, however you define that, a thriving, growing economy with a fine underpinning of morality and decency. And all of this stuff that we look at, we see it crumbling every day, rips our heart out. I’ll just speak for myself. Rips my heart out to see this stuff happen every day.
This stuff in Ferguson, Missouri, and this stuff with Eric Garner, rips my heart out. And then to see people try to take advantage of it and use those examples, loudly use those examples to tell everybody, “See, America is a false promise. See, this whole business of liberty and freedom is a false promise because of all the racism and discrimination and bigotry and all that.” We’ve all got our obstacles to overcome. We all face people that discriminate against us. We all face people that are mean to us. We all face unfairness. We all face inequity of some kind. No two people are the same; no two results are the same; outcomes cannot possibly be made the same.
But it is the quest to be the best you can be. It’s the quest to learn, the quest to achieve things in life that gives you an identity. You talk about self-esteem, it’s where your self-esteem is rooted. You know, we look at liberalism as denying even the opportunity from people to find themselves, to find their spot in life, to find their happiness, to find fulfillment. And the reason there’s such misery on the left, the reason there’s such unhappiness on the left is because they don’t have a prayer of being fulfilled. A, they’re told they can’t. B, they’re told to wait on other people to make it happen for them, who can’t make it happen for them. All they can do is spread misery around equally.
When I say that the greatest thing that can happen to somebody is to find out what you want to do or find out what your passion is and go for it, it’s the single greatest result you can have in your life as an adult, aside from family and all of those things, but speaking strictly personally here. You have to love yourself before anybody else will. You have to be happy with yourself before anybody else will. You have to take care of yourself. That’s not selfishness.
Self-interest and selfishness are two totally different things. Self-interest, everybody pursuing self-interest is how everybody else grows, because the benefits spread, the results multiply. People generally do far better relying on themselves than sitting around waiting for false promises to be made. You can see it. That’s the thing about it. You can see the absolute — how many Americans do we have not working now, 92, almost 93 million not working? And I guarantee you they’re not happy. They’re all eating. They all have TVs, but they’re not happy. There’s a degree of unsettledness or disquiet, malaise in all those people.
Advice for Young People on How to Achieve Success
The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 23, 2019
RUSH: Okay. I’ll give this a shot. I have said over the years that there haven’t been, by comparison, I remember when I was a young teenager — I wanted to do radio since I was 8. So when I would run into anybody who was in it, I’d just ask them question after question after question.
Advice for Young People on How to Achieve Success
The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 23, 2019
RUSH: Independence, Missouri, up next. This is Mark. It’s great to be with you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey. Thanks, Rush. Merry Christmas. An open line Monday question for you not directly related to Democrat madness. Great talk to those young people, even if it was only eight minutes, a lot of great advice to the greatness of the country. Do you have any advice for them and all of us on success? I remember a couple years back you said very few in the radio business ask you about being a success in that business. I was astounded. I’d proudly ask you for advice for success, not necessarily in the radio business, but in life and taking advantage of our great country as this year approaches and I’m sure many young people would like to hear your advice as well.
RUSH: Okay. I’ll give this a shot. I have said over the years that there haven’t been, by comparison, I remember when I was a young teenager — I wanted to do radio since I was 8. So when I would run into anybody who was in it, I’d just ask them question after question after question. I asked so many questions, one guy said, “You know, it sounds to me like you’re more interested in how to do it than actually doing it.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, at some point you gotta stop asking questions and start doing things.”
And I said, “Well, I’m not old enough to start doing things. I’m not old enough to get hired yet.”
“Well, yes, you are, if you really want to, but at some point you gotta stop asking and you gotta start doing. You can’t learn everything about doing something just by asking about it.” Which I knew. It was still some relevant advice, probably from somebody who was tired of all my questions. But I have noticed that I’ve gotten much less of that than I sought myself.
And you know, I ask people in TV, ’cause it interests me, I’ll talk to veterans at Fox, “How many of these young people that you’ve hired have come to you and sought your advice about how to advance or how to do television, how to do what they’re trying to do?” It’s amazing the number of people who say none. They all show up thinking they know everything. If they’ve been hired, they think they know everything, and they don’t need any advice.
That’s just a casual observation. I don’t mean anything substantive by it. I think it’s just cultural differences. I think if there’s one thing about successful people that they all have in common is that they love it. Whatever it is, it’s their passion. It’s their number one passion. It’s the thing they love the most.
Unfortunately for a lot of people the thing they love the most is their hobby. Something they don’t get paid for. But the next thing to do is to realize that you live in a place with boundless opportunity. Don’t listen to the noise. Don’t listen to the pessimists. Do not seek advice from people who failed at what you want to do. ‘Cause they’re everywhere. And they don’t want to be alone.
I can’t tell you the number of people who tried to talk me out of it. “Rush, it’s vicious, it will eat you up and spit you out. The chances are so slim, it’s just a road to misery.” And I decided after a while not to listen to those people and then I decided after a while not to even talk to ’em. I was only gonna find people who had succeeded and try to learn from them.
Now, then there are basics. I don’t care what it is that you want to do, you have to have a well-rounded knowledge and more importantly, the ability to demonstrate that you have it. This is not just broadcasting and radio. You have to be able to communicate what you know. You have to do things that are going to inspire confidence in yourself.
You have to really like yourself to be confident. And it is confidence that will open up opportunity to you. It’s confidence that will allow you to transmit what you know in ways that are persuasive and impressive. Now, there’s some other things that are common too. Sadly, I’ve run out of time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: If you ever have a chance to have a conversation with President Trump, you know what he talks about a lot? He talks about people who are great at what they do, the best at what they do. Don’t care what it is, he loves talking about people like that.
RUSH: Folks, when people ask me advice on success, you know, the problem with advice is that it can be limiting rather than expansive. And so that’s why I try to keep it generic. I appreciate the question. I appreciate the presumption that I know what to advise in success. I’ll give you an example why this is a bit of a challenge.
If you, let’s say, wanted to be in radio, let’s say that you wanted to do your own talk show and you went to anybody in broadcasting that could make a decision to hire you or not, and you tell ’em that you want to do a talk show, no one even today would advise you to do what I did. And yet this is a pretty successful venture. And nobody would tell you to do it.
When I started, the wizards of smart and the powers that be in radio tried to talk me out of doing what I do. They said, “You can’t do a show without guests, and you have to take calls, and it has to be about local things.” I didn’t want other people to be the reason my show had an audience. I was explaining over the weekend to people, somebody was saying, “You know, I’ve never heard a show like yours.” I said, “The only reason you say that is because mine’s the only one where there aren’t any guests.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Why is that?” And I said from a strict business standpoint, why should I invest — I’ve got an hour here, three hours. Why should I give any of that time regularly and as a routine to people who are not nearly as invested in the success of this show as I am? And why should I give a portion of this program every day to people that are already everywhere else in the media? There’s nobody out there that I can get that’s not everywhere else, and there’s nothing I can get them to say that they haven’t said anywhere else, so why? Why do what everybody else does?
“Well, because there’s a formula.” Well, there was. Talk radio shows had a formula. Guests were paramount, issues being local was another thing that was paramount. Taking calls was paramount, and how you behaved with calls. Some people wanted insult hosts. Some people didn’t. But I just said, “Why should I join the fray?”
It happened at a juncture, too, where I thought I had one last chance to make this work, so I wanted to find out — I knew — so I wanted to demonstrate that I could be the reason people listened, not some endless parade of guests who don’t care about whether this show succeeds or not. They’re only here to hype a book or a movie or whatever. And they’re already everywhere else.
But even to this day if you walked into a radio station and wanted to do a talk show, nobody would tell you to do it like I do. That’s not a criticism. The point is, don’t be constrained by norms. Let your passion dictate what you want to do and be brave. And don’t listen to negativists, and other thing, whatever you do, do not get distracted and absorbed over things not under your control. It’s just a waste of time. It is a psychologically destructive thing to do to try to get involved in things that you can’t control. You have enough challenges trying to deal with those things that you can control.
But I really do think that wanting it is 80% of it, all things being equal. You’re educated, you’re able to speak. And I mean in anything. You don’t begin every sentence with, “So, uh, hey, what time — so let me look at my watch. What time — it’s, uhhh, 2:12.” Learn to speak what you think. Don’t be afraid to say what you think. And be passionate about what it is.
And if there’s no money in it, find a way to make money at it. Create the revenue stream if you can. It’s not universally true for everybody, but there’s no substitute for desire. One of the greatest tight ends in football today, a guy named George Kittle, number 85, San Francisco 49ers, he has a philosophy. He’s the hottest tight end in football now. He believes that once you get to the NFL, the talent is so pretty equal that the difference in success and failure in the NFL is mental. Focus, confidence, weeding out all distractions. Don’t get hung up on things you can’t control.
So George Kittle, the night before every game, goes solo and alone for three hours, mentally focusing on the game the next day, putting himself in circumstances that he foresees. Third-down situations, team winning, team losing, time left on the clock. He tries to arrange things so that whatever that happens in the game is not a surprise, that he’s mentally prepared for it because he’s already studied it, focused on it. The weather, if it’s raining, if it’s gonna be cold as hell, it’s all mental.
And when talking about the National Football League and the talent level, he’s right. I mean, the number of players qualified to play in the NFL is so few compared to the whole population, that by the time you get there, the differences in talent from position to position, they’re not much. There’s not a whole lot of drop-off until you get to third string. And even then, you’re still talking about people that are infinitely more qualified than the rest of the population. The difference for him is entirely mental. Focus.
Now, there’s some givens in this. I mean, physical ability, he’s got it. Don’t have work at that. He has to make sure he keeps it, have to work out and all that. That’s not something that he has to worry about. He’s tall enough, he weighs enough, he’s strong enough. He has to work at all that stuff, but everybody in the league does that.
But not everybody has the same mental toughness, the same focus, the same ability to overcome adversity. He thinks that’s the difference in winning and losing and championships in the National Football League. Well, you can apply that to anything in life that you want to do. And probably it’s not an easy thing to do, to sit around by yourself for three hours a night and try to imagine every circumstance that you could face the next day so that when it happens, you’re not surprised by it.
Some people would advise against doing this because all you’re gonna do is paralyze yourself. Game day comes and you’re gonna be waiting for those things to happen rather than having the ability to react to what does happen. But it works, it works for him.
And so therein is the last piece of advice. Don’t think there’s only one way to do anything because there isn’t. There are countless ways, and even now, depending on what it is you want to do, there are countless ways to do what you want to do that may not have been done before or may not have been done very often or frequently.
And remember that the pressure on everybody is to conform. Conformity creates the least amount of problems for bosses and managers. Nonconformity, that’s a problem. I am a nonconformist. It’s why I would never succeed in any corporate structure. Some people are made for it, though. This is the thing, there’s no right or wrong about whatever it is you want to do. Just find it. That’s half of it, if not more.
And how you find it is being honest with yourself about what you love and what your passions are. And what you want to be. Some people, “What do I want people to think of me?” Other people, “What do I want to do?” Whatever it is that motivates you.
I’ve often found that one of the worst things you can do, though, is to get even with people you think wronged you in the past. “I’m gonna succeed at this just so those people will see they were wrong.” Fine. Let it motivate you awhile, but don’t let that be why you’re doing what you’re doing, ’cause they’ll never acknowledge it anyway. You’ll never get the satisfaction you seek.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: White Lake, Michigan. This is August. You’re next, sir. Great to have you.
CALLER: (garbled cell connection) Rush, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve given me a great, wonderful Christmas present. You and Snerdley are fabulous, your staff.
RUSH: (chuckles)
CALLER: God bless you. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays to whoever’s listening.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. Everybody appreciates that.
CALLER: Well, thank you. We appreciate you, and I was able while I was waiting to hear how our own president — who I think’s fantastic — gave you a tremendous introduction at a rally, and he was spot on. And you deserve all the accolades you get because you, sir, have done it. You are the voice of reason in this country. I’m 65. I’ve been listening to you for years when I can, and I continue to learn from you. You educate me, you inspire me, and I’m gonna make a difference too.
And I’m gonna get more involved in two things that most people don’t want to, and that’s gonna be politics and religion. We have freedom in this country! Now, I can go worship wherever I want. You can’t do that in a lot of countries in the world. I can go visit friends and relatives in any state and even leave the country. You can’t do that in many countries of the world. You can’t even leave your own neighborhoods, let alone things that you might not be able to do.
This country gives tremendous possibilities to everyone. I don’t understand the division. I don’t understand the so-called hatred. I don’t have time for hatred. I don’t even have time for dislike! But I have time for life, for liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and I’m thankful every day that I can do that. And it’s life! I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve lived. I’ve done some good things. I’ve done some bad things. I’ve confronted all kinds of people, but I am living, and I hope to God I live for another 40 like Moses in the desert.
RUSH: Well, wanting to is part of the deal.
CALLER: Absolutely, and you talk about some of these (unintelligible) like always do. The young man that wanted to know about… When I see successful people, what I found in my lifetime is, first of all, they’ve got a vision. There’s the vision, and then that vision they’re so passionate about, like you said, and they won’t stop at nothing until that vision becomes reality. Whatever it takes. And it could be… I’ve said it in any industry, medical, manufacturing, technology, and (unintelligible) people that (unintelligible) —
RUSH: That’s absolutely true. I tell everybody who I run into, “There’s so much pessimism. I think pessimism is a natural human tendency,” as I have constantly reminded people. Pessimism is easy. Negativism easy. We all know how to do it. Sadly, for some people, it’s their natural state. Optimism takes application. Thinking positively, you gotta stop and do it. Most people do. For all of the pessimism… I’ve run into people, “No, I can’t do that. The deck’s stacked against me.”
Well, all this pessimism and negativity is out there. All you have to do is open your eyes and look at the contraindications. There are people succeeding wildly every day. How’s it possible if it isn’t possible? People are doing it. Tune out the noise, remain dedicated to your desires, and be patient. That’s a tough one too. Anyway, I appreciate, August, your really nice comments. I do. Thank you so much.
