Top 98 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Cohen

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.

How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.

Republicans remain silent because Trump is doing what they want - lowering taxes on the rich, eviscerating regulations, bulldozing the environment, and insisting that a woman's body is not her own.

If every senator looks into the mirror and sees a future president, then every president looks into that same mirror and sees himself on Mount Rushmore.

To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.

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.

George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.

Fox News has been a force in converting the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump. The network's allegiance to Trump approaches mindless adoration.

We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.

Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy's balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Let me tell you, seven days without Wolf Blitzer is heaven. A week outside 'The Situation Room' is downright calming. No 'breaking news!' No hype. Blitzer is a first-class journalist, and I mention him only by way of acknowledging his fame.

With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump.

When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.

Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca.' Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.

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?

It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.

What if Hillary Clinton were a man? What if she were a 68-year-old man rather than a 68-year-old woman? Would we think differently of her?

It's all right with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States - if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth.

The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.

I don't know if history will adjudge Barack Obama a great president, but he has been a necessary one.

We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.

The grieving are surely owed our empathy, but capital punishment can neither right a wrong nor prevent another from happening.

The ability and willingness to keep two opposing views in mind at the same time are hallmarks of adulthood.

Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.

There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.

Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen, or a conversation not held.

I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.

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.

Trump was always a poster boy of the selfish, egomaniacal, ignorant, bragging, cruel rich kid, whose mirror was the sleazy pages of Rupert Murdoch's 'New York Post.' Trump's oxygen was the leaked item, without which he would die the suffocating death of being shown to a bad table.

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

There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.

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

I am not a German bitter-ender. I am, though, a German never-forgetter.

It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.

Trump's presidency will fail. Just don't ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.

Conservatives watch Fox News and read 'Breitbart.' Liberals watch MSNBC and read 'HuffPost.' When we agree, it's the truth; when we differ, it's fake news.

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.

We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.

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.'

Trump's juvenilia stands in stark contrast to Obama's measured words.

I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.

The concept of cultural appropriation is nothing less than an intellectual fence: Keep out.

It takes a willful disregard of history to appreciate how white Southerners could look at the Confederate battle flag and see states' rights or a way of life or a tradition - and not one human being whipping another, which was a common occurrence.

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

Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times.

We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.

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.

Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.

The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.

Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.

Trump is a menace, both ignorant and chaotic. His saving grace is his incompetence.

In my several visits to Germany, I have written in admiration of that country's strenuous efforts to face its past and make amends.

What's the justification for a semiautomatic weapon with a magazine of 30 rounds?

Heroism is a matter of choice.

Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.

Leaving aside handguns and hunting weapons, what's the justification for possessing an AR-15-style weapon?

It is not true that Trump is nobody's fool. He is the GOP's.

As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.