Bret Stephens Quotes
-
When you work at 'The Wall Street Journal,' the coins of the realm are truth and trust - the latter flowing exclusively from the former.
-
I grew up in Mexico City at a time when the country was a repressive one-party dictatorship almost wholly dependent on oil revenues.
-
Generosity is a virtue, but unlimited generosity is a fast route to bankruptcy.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs.
-
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 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.
-
I don't read 'Vanity Fair,' whose millionaire-fashionista-liberal shtick I find repellent.
-
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.
-
We elected Donald J. Trump to keep us jittery and entertained. He's delivered.
-
Countries we love will inevitably do things we don't like or fail to understand. The same goes for people.
-
'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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.
-
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.
-
Censoriously asserting one's moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.
-
Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.
-
Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.
-
The American tradition rests on pillars of self-questioning, self-actualization, and disagreement.