Bret Stephens

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

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

“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...”

“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 e...”

“Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.”

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

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

“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 fo...”

“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. N...”

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

“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 c...”

“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...”

“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....”

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

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

“'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 al...”

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

“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 dyin...”

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

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