26 Insightful Quotes About Brexit

“Well, that was pretty awesome – and I mean that in the worst way. A number of people deserve vast condemnation here, from David Cameron, who may go down in history as the man who risked wrecking Europe and his own nation for the sake of a momentary political advantage, to the seriously evil editors…”

— Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

“David Cameron... The man who arrived as leader of his party pledging to purge its obsession with ‘banging on about Europe’ has blown himself up over Europe.”

— Andrew Rawnsley, theguardian.com

“It seems clear that the European project – the whole effort to promote peace and growing political union through economic integration – is in deep, deep trouble.”

— Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

“The more the EU does, the less room there is for national decision-making. Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners. Sometimes they can be truly…”

— Boris Johnson, telegraph.co.uk

“The big mistakes were the adoption of the euro without careful thought about how a single currency would work without a unified government; the disastrous framing of the euro crisis as a morality play brought on by irresponsible southerners; the establishment of free labor mobility among culturally…”

— Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

“The varied nations of Europe understood that they'd be much stronger if they forged a common market with shared institutions and even a regional currency, the euro, than if they tried to compete as independent units... As a whole, the EU should in theory wield significant power in pressing Beijing t…”

— Michael Schuman, bloomberg.com

“The sad irony of all this is that the E.U. was built to prevent the very kind of nationalist fervor its economic mismanagement and political heavy-handedness are provoking now. The dustbin of history exists for a reason. And yet, and yet. It's easy for a generation that has only known peace and rela…”

— Matt O'Brien, washingtonpost.com

“By choosing ‘leave,’ British voters demonstrated an unfortunate short-sightedness about how the world is changing and how hard it will be for any country with global ambitions to go it alone. With Brexit, both the U.K. and Europe are losing a lot more than a partnership. They're losing their best ch…”

— Michael Schuman, bloomberg.com

“Indeed, Japan is the place where a Brexit vote might lead to an imminent reaction. The yen touched Y100/$ overnight, a strengthening that will not be welcome in Tokyo, where the economy is weak and deflationary pressures remain. The Bank of Japan may be contemplating a response.”

— BUTTONWOOD, economist.com

“We don't have a common market in the Americas. But in all sorts of ways, the United States constrains itself in order to bind everyone under a common set of norms and rules that makes everybody more prosperous.”

— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov

“It will be a formidable challenge for Britain’s next prime minister to make an economic, diplomatic and political success out of Brexit. Or, to set the bar at a more realistic level, to contain the damage.”

— Andrew Rawnsley, theguardian.com

“I am sick and tired of watching folks like Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, and others appeal to the worst racial instincts of our species, only to be shushed by folks telling me that it's not really racism driving their popularity. It's economic angst. It's regular folks tired of being s…”

— Kevin Drum, motherjones.com

“Right-wing populists like Pat Buchanan in the United States, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jörg Haider in Austria had scored surprising near-victories, if not actual ones, in the late 1990s and early 2000s by focusing the working class's incipient ire on a "foreign" enemy besides outsourcing: immi…”

— Matt O'Brien, washingtonpost.com

“It was the working classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another.”

— Anonymous, facebook.com

“I’m not coming here to fix any votes. I’m not casting a vote myself. I’m offering my opinion. And in democracies, everybody should want more information, not less. And you shouldn’t be afraid to hear an argument being made… If, right now, I’ve got access to a massive market where I sell 44 percent o…”

— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov

“Awakening to a stock market plunge and a precipitous decline in the value of the pound that Britain hasn't seen in more than 30 years, voters now face a series of economic shocks that analysts say will only worsen before they improve. The consequences of the leave vote will be felt worldwide, even h…”

— Brian Fung, washingtonpost.com

“We are not on Facebook, where things are complicated. We are married or divorced but not something in between.”

— Xavier Bettel, rt.com

“Brexiteers like the cheating man shocked he can't stay in the spare room for 2 years while he sorts himself out.”

— J.K. RowlingVerified account, twitter.com

“We now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths, they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When Michael Grove said 'the British people are sick of experts' he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of a…”

— Anonymous, facebook.com

“The Founding Fathers had it right. There is an inherent danger coming from direct democracy when combined with an uninformed and manipulated public that has to decide the policy of a country, as we saw on June 23 when 36 percent of eligible voters in the UK chose to exit the European Union. Again, t…”

— Franz-Stefan Gady, thediplomat.com

“I hope I’m wrong to think that Britain has made a choice that will have very bad consequences, because I don’t wish disaster on my country. But among the things to fear is what happens when the millions of poorer Britons who were seduced by the Brexiters discover that it is not the miracle solution…”

— Andrew Rawnsley, theguardian.com

“Brexit. Grexit. Departugal. Italeave. Fruckoff. Czechout. Oustria. Finish. Slovakout. Latervia. Byegium.”

— Rahul Goma Phulore, twitter.com

“‘This is a dark day,’ he said. ‘But I hold out hope that, come November, Americans could become dumber than us once more.”

— Andy Borowitz, newyorker.com

“I think there's a British poet who once said, 'No man is an island' even an island as beautiful as this. We're stronger together. And if we continue to tackle our challenges together, then future generations will look back on ours, just as we look back on the previous generation of English and Ameri…”

— Barack Obama, whitehouse.gov

“The numbing news that Britain has voted to leave the European Union is the worst step backward for Europe -- and for Western civilization -- since the end of World War II.”

— Charles Kaiser, edition.cnn.com

“History doesn't always move forward.”

— Matt O'Brien, washingtonpost.com