Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Bret Stephens - Page 2

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

I write my columns pretty carefully.

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.

I think there's always merit in getting out of our ideological silos and being exposed to points of view with which we don't always agree.

Yes, Obama took over two wars from Bush - just as President Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Lyndon Johnson and President Dwight Eisenhower inherited Korea from President Harry Truman. But at least the war in Iraq was all but won by 2009, thanks largely to the very surge Obama had opposed as a senator.

I'm simply here to say guns should be owned by responsible people, and there should be high tests and a high bar to prove your responsibility.

I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.

Countries we love will inevitably do things we don't like or fail to understand. The same goes for people.

Everything Republicans once claimed to advocate - entitlement reform, free trade, standing up to dictators, encouraging the march of freedom around the world - turns out to be negotiable and reversible, depending on Donald Trump's whims and the furies of his base.

It's normal that elections make fierce partisans of many of us. It's normal that Mr. Trump would attract the usual right-wing buffoons to his banners. Normal, also, is that many voters may not be troubled by Mr. Trump's cruder statements when they hear him addressing their deepest economic and social anxieties.

Perhaps the reason Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature is that they so frequently conform to type.

I think Black Lives Matter has some really thuggish elements in it. Look - at the risk of being incredibly politically incorrect, but I guess that's my job - I think that all lives matter. Not least black lives.

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

Do I think police chiefs, many of which are African-American or Hispanic, wake up and say, 'Let's systemically oppress African-American communities?' No, I don't. Are there instances in which that happens? I'm sure there are.

No adviser to a president is going to get his way all of the time, but at a minimum, that adviser should be able to defend the tilt of an administration's policy as if it were his own. If not, he should make room for those who can.

Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs.

Humanitarianism is commendable, but not when you're demanding that others share the burdens and expense.

I get if you're a conservative, and you're saying, I don't know, 'Government shouldn't be mandating what's taught in classrooms,' or, 'Government is too intrusive in our economic life,' well, that's standard conservatism.

Since the end of World War II, U.S. presidents of both parties have recognized that foreign and domestic policy do not have to be pursued at the expense of each other.

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

I think that for the United States, Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I'm not so sure about Donald Trump.

The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

In the scale of American blunders - from the Dred Scott decision to the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s to the tragedy of Vietnam - is the Trump presidency really unique?

I grew up with parents who liked the old line that they didn't leave the Democratic Party - the Democratic Party left them.

Liberals always cry wolf.

I don't see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it's slightly less bad than the opposition.

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.

It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents - this kind of ethnic, quote, 'conservatism,' or populism - be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party, the Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape, or form.

We elected Donald J. Trump to keep us jittery and entertained. He's delivered.

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

I don't think it is impossible to make the case to sensible Americans that far greater restrictions on their so-called gun rights is imperative for public safety. It is an argument we can win.

The American birthright belongs, potentially, to everyone. This is unprecedented. Other countries accept migrants on the basis of economic necessity or as a humanitarian gesture. Only in America is it the direct consequence of our foundational ideals.

When those of us in the words-making world use the term 'overregulation,' we are mostly putting a name to a concept we rarely experience consciously.

I will never vote for Donald Trump.

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.

Among the events of John McCain's five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.

Free trade was once a Republican conviction.

The people we need to hear from most are the ones who make themselves heard least - except, of course, on Election Day.

The criterion for racism is either objective or it's meaningless: If liberals get to decide for themselves who is or isn't a racist according to their political lights, conservatives will be within their rights to ignore them.

Nearly everyone I know seems to have a well-developed theory as to why this country is past redemption, or almost, and every theory seems almost right.

The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.

In taking care with language, we take care of ourselves.

I think a Donald Trump presidency raises a new kind of version of conservatism which more closely resembles a kind of Father Coughlin, America first populism and nativism and isolationism, than the confident, modern, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, engaged conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.

In the Middle East there are two kinds of regimes - those that could be worse, and those that couldn't be worse.

I think a Donald Trump presidency sets up an Elizabeth Warren ascendancy. And it not Elizabeth Warren, someone of her ilk. And I think that's dreadful.

I have a very, very hard time voting for Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton.

The dismissal of any of these people would send a useful signal to U.S. allies that the president has the nerve - and self-awareness - to make a change.

What is absolutely clear is that if Trump is the nominee, Republicans cannot win. Maybe they can't win with Rubio or Cruz or Kasich. We don't know. But what is absolutely certain is that with Hillary Clinton locking up the Democratic base, she is going to win unless she has a strong contender who is going to be able to pull - not only bring the entire Republican Party on the side, but win moderates. Donald Trump cannot do that.

I have been writing about Hillary Clinton, I just actually looked this up, since 1998 when she was busy standing by when Suha Arafat was launching anti-Semitic tirades against Israel and the Jews.

Hillary Clinton's record in office is dreadful. Her ideas are dreadful. They will make us less safe. So, but there is no way I'm going to vote for a guy who is just totally uninformed, un-presidential as Donald Trump is.

The only person who counts in the administration is the president of the United States.

When George W. Bush decided to save the American position in Iraq by going against the advice of all of his wise men, of Jim Baker and the whole Iraq Study Group, and 90% of his administration, that was George W. Bush's decision. So we have to bear in mind that this isn't an administration we're electing. It's a person that we are electing.

I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

Who knows better than you what it means to have a commander-in-chief who lived his entire life, who lived throughout the entire Cold War, and doesn't know what the nuclear triad is? It's absolutely astonishing. And so it's terrific to have Joe Dunford and you know, perhaps John Bolton and other people in positions of trust.

Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I'm not so sure about [Donald] Trump.

The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy.

If, in 2008, I could have not been in equities, I wouldn't have been in equities. If I could have not bet on the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, I wouldn't have bet on the Seahawks. Life and statesmanship are not lived with the benefit of hindsight.