Top 66 Bret Stephens Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

Free trade was once a Republican conviction.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

‘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.

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.

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

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

Food insecurity is not remotely the same as hunger.

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

‘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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.