Jacob Weisberg

“Most people prefer living in a healthier town.”

“We're quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as 'crazy,' and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I've long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense.”

“To count as transformative, a president needs to synthesize the moment and mood of the country.”

“Paradoxically, I think working at an Internet magazine intensifies the attraction of beautiful printed objects.”

“Professional politicians often claim they are not professional politicians. Trump genuinely isn't one.”

“Running a magazine is a journalistic assignment, and part of the fun of being a journalist is that you get to change jobs every so often. Though there's no stated term limit, four or five years should be plenty of time to put your stamp on a publication.”

“Essential to the self-image of conservatives is the notion that they are enemies of an established orthodoxy, insurgents against the dogmatic political correctness that predominates on the Left.”

“Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.”

“Closely allied to the assumption that Democrats can't win because they're too secular is the view that they can't win if they're too liberal. This assumption has steered Hillary Clinton toward the center, following her husband. I tend to share this view myself.”

“Seeing the rich and famous screw up makes us feel superior, or at least not quite so inferior.”

“Both Left and Right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.”

“Like academic Marxists, who are their sisters under the skin, libertarians are far more interested in an ideal world than in the one where ordinary humans live.”

“Americans are defined by a history of immigration in pursuit of freedom and opportunity. We are more individualistic, enterprising, and protective of liberties that most Europeans do not expect, such as owning guns, working 70-hour weeks, or appreciating nature as it goes by at 60 mph on a snowmobile.”

“Within half an hour of posting a piece on 'Slate,' I get a direct, often hostile and personal, response from readers.”

“By 2003, if you didn't understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren't paying much attention.”

“For the grifter, ripping people off is seldom the point. The grifter is an artiste who invests in the long con.”

“I think part of the reason anyone goes into journalism is to get a response to what they write.”

“Republicans with any moral sense are desperate for a supportable alternative to Donald Trump.”

“Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.”

“Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism.”