Bret Stephens

“There is something kind of aggressively and inhumanly repetitive about this line that guns are essential to American liberties - hard one to stomach when so many thousands of people are dying every year for this so-called liberty.”

“The Arab world's problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism.”

“For the anti-Semite, the problems of the world can invariably be ascribed to the Jews; for the Communist, to the capitalists.”

“Every president inherits a mixed bag when he comes to office, and Obama's was hardly the worst.”

“My wife is German, so I know something about German energy policy.”

“A Trump presidency - neutral between dictatorships and democracies, opposed to free trade, skeptical of traditional U.S. defense alliances, hostile to immigration - would mark the collapse of the entire architecture of the U.S.-led post-World War II global order.”

“My father's political heroes were Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.”

“An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.”

“I almost never listen to radio or watch political talk shows, especially if I happen to be on them.”

“Social movements rarely succeed if they violate our gut sense of decency and moral proportion.”

“Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.”

“Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?”

“We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.”

“Ignore Trump's tweets. Yes, it's unrealistic. But we would all be better off if the media reported them more rarely, reacted to them less strongly, and treated them with less alarm and more bemusement.”

“Many of you have been reared on the cliche that the purpose of education isn't to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong.”

“In place of presidential addresses, stump speeches, or town halls, we have Trump's demagogic mass rallies. In place of the usual jousting between the administration and the press, we have a president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN.”

“The United States can only lead a world that's prepared to follow.”

“Anyone who has been the victim of the social-media furies knows just how distorting and dishonest those furies can be.”

“Of course ABC and its parent company Disney were right to cancel the sitcom 'Roseanne' after its eponymous star, Roseanne Barr, wrote a racist tweet.”

“There was a time when the conservative movement was led by the likes of Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol and Bob Bartley, men of ideas who invested the Republican Party with intellectual seriousness.”