Richard Cohen

“Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.”

“If you told me back in my Army days that I could have bought the same weapon that I had been using in training, I would not have believed it.”

“Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.”

“I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn't seem to know what the truth is.”

“You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'”

“The term 'disrupter' has become an accolade, like first-responder or something.”

“Sometimes I think that Rush Limbaugh is the dumbest man in America. This happens whenever I take him at face value and forget that he is basically an entertainer with contempt for his audience. He will tell them anything.”

“I value my education, but I cannot put a value on it. I know it has been worth some money to me - I don't think 'The Post' would have hired me if I had lacked a degree - but I probably could have earned about the same if I had stayed in the insurance business, where I worked while going to college at night.”

“There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.”

“Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?”

“Trump critics such as myself have been accused of living in a bubble. On the contrary, it is Trump's supporters in the 1 percent who breathed their own fumes.”

“I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry - and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.”

“In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.”

“I met Clinton during her husband's first campaign for the White House. It was 1992, New Hampshire, and both Clintons had stopped at a coffee shop to greet the folks and get something to eat.”

“The fact is that the United States does not need Israel. Our special relationship was not forged, as it was with Great Britain, in two world wars, not to mention a common language and, in significant respects, culture. It is based on warmth, emotion, shared values - and, not to be dismissed, a potent domestic lobby.”

“Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.”

“Germany's crimes were recent and of such a scale and depravity that, unless constantly faced, they will come to seem fictitious.”

“Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.”