Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Bret Stephens

Did you loathe and detest the Bush administration? If so, you'd probably say its ideas were horrible and their execution worse. Did you not loathe and detest the Bush administration? In that case, you might say its ideas were pretty good - only the execution often left something to be desired.

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.

It may be a truism that the country cannot be strong abroad unless it is strong at home, but it's also a fact that the country's economic prosperity depends on its security abroad - not only in the core of the liberal democratic world but often well beyond it, too.

I am not sorry the CIA went to the edge of the law in the aftermath of 9/11 to prevent further mass-casualty attacks on the U.S.

The American tradition rests on pillars of self-questioning, self-actualization, and disagreement.

Voter fraud is a reality in American elections, but it is typical of the candidate to confuse anecdote with data and turn allegation into conspiracy.

Censoriously asserting one's moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

Down with politics and the art of the possible; up with pronouncements and the allure of the prophetic: It's the way of demagogues everywhere.

The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters' most shameless ideological instincts.

The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism.

'Character Doesn't Count' has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. 'Virtue Doesn't Matter' might be another. But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump's shortcomings prove it daily.

Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The fervor of his crowds recalls Nasser's Egypt. His convictions are illiberal. His manners are disgusting. His temper is frightening.

This is the standard line of the Trump side of the party, that us who oppose him are just a bunch of elites who live in the Acela corridor in this bubble of unimaginable wealth. I wish I had been born into an extremely wealthy New York real estate family and been given multimillion dollar loans to get my start in life.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

What too many of Mr. Trump's supporters want is an American strongman, a president who will make the proverbial trains run on time.

'Democratic socialism' is awful as a slogan and catastrophic as a policy. And 'social democracy' - a term that better fits the belief of more ordinary liberals who want, say, Medicare for all - is a politically dying force. Democrats who aren't yet sick of all their losing should feel free to embrace them both.

If the Republican party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it, not only for demographic reasons but for reasons of principle. The party of Lincoln is a party of opportunity for everyone. It's a party about the right to rise, and Mr. Trump unfortunately doesn't represent that view.

In every generation, there's a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else.

Barack Obama is probably the coolest president this country will ever have.

Movements that hector and punish rather than educate and reform have a way of inviting derision and reaction.

Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.

The intelligent defense of free speech should not rest on the notion that we must tolerate every form of speech, no matter how offensive. It's that we should lean toward greater tolerance for speech we dislike, and reserve our harshest penalties only for the worst offenders.

Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.

When it comes to trade, when it comes to standing up to countries like North Korea, when it comes to standing up to guys like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is not a conservative.

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

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

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

It's easy to deprecate some of the puffery and jingoism that often go with affirmations of 'American greatness.' It's also easy to confuse greatness with perfection, as if evidence of our shortcomings is proof of our mediocrity.

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.

Donald Trump's more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says.

People want leaders. Not ideologues. Not people whose life experiences have been so narrow that they've been able to maintain the purity of their youthful ideals. Not people whose principal contact with political life comes in the form of speeches and sound bites rather than decisions and responsibilities.

The most interesting conversation is not about why Donald Trump lies. Many public figures lie, and he's only a severe example of a common type. The interesting conversation concerns how we come to accept those lies.

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.

My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing.

I wear two hats at the 'Wall Street Journal': one as a columnist, the other as the editor responsible for our editorial pages in Asia and Europe.

When Trump attacks the news media, he's kicking a wounded animal.

Ms. Rice was a bad national security adviser and a bad secretary of state. She was on the wrong side of some of the administration's biggest internal policy fights. She had a tendency to flip-flop when it came to the president's core priorities, and her political misjudgment more than once cost Mr. Bush dearly.

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.

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

The supposedly petty sexual harassment that so many women have to endure, from Hollywood studios to the factory floor at Ford, is a national outrage that needs to end. Period.

The more afraid we are of the shadow of racism, the more conscious we might become of our own unsuspected biases.

There are necessary taboos and essential decencies in every morally healthy society.

If a public figure tells a whopping lie once in his life, it'll haunt him into his grave. If he lies morning, noon and night, it will become almost impossible to remember any one particular lie.

Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions.

Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents.

Democrats should have learned in 2016 that what counts in American politics is location, not turnout.

I don't read 'Vanity Fair,' whose millionaire-fashionista-liberal shtick I find repellent.

I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It's not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It's that they can't connect the dots when they don't know where the dots are in the first place.

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?

Generosity is a virtue, but unlimited generosity is a fast route to bankruptcy.

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

All societies make necessary moral distinctions between high crimes and misdemeanors, mortal and lesser sins.

I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.

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

Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.

Before the word 'resignation' became a euphemism for being fired, it connoted a sense of public integrity and personal honor.

When you work at 'The Wall Street Journal,' the coins of the realm are truth and trust - the latter flowing exclusively from the former.

Food insecurity is not remotely the same as hunger.

The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred.

The best scientific evidence suggests temperatures are rising, and the best scientific evidence suggests man-made anthropogenic carbon emissions have some substantial thing to do with that. However, does that mean the trend will continue forever? We don't know.