Top 60 Richard Cohen Quotes

I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry – and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.

Israel may be beloved, but for American security, it is not essential.

My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the ‘elite.’ If so, I damned well earned it.

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

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.

Hillary Clinton may have lied about her emails, but Donald Trump lies about everything.

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

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

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.’

Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need.

There is precious little that’s charitable about the world of charity.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don’t, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.

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

Most men, I think, wonder about their courage. How would they act in combat? Under torture?

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

Something about the Clintons sets the GOP to howling at the moon.

Churchill had a marvelous way with words, and greatness accompanied him like a shadow, but in certain ways, he was a 19th-century man wandering, confounded, in the 20th.

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.

I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved – journalism.

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.

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

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

Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.

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

I have written about cultural dislocation, and I understand the corrosive effect of diminished expectations.

My heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not.

I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn’t seem to know what the truth is.

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?

Raising money, like sausage-making, ain’t pretty to see, and it would be just criminally naive to rely on the big hearts of big donors.

Hillary Clinton looms over the Democratic Party like Evita from her balcony.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I am glad to see the Confederate battle flag gone from a place of honor at the South Carolina state capitol.

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.

Among the things I know is that Trump voters were played for suckers.

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

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.

The more Scott Walker campaigns, the more he proves he is not intellectually fit for the office he’s seeking. He asserts innocent ignorance on matters he should by now know something about – a way of masking his apparent bigotry.

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 are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The term ‘disrupter’ has become an accolade, like first-responder or something.

The fact is that the United States does not need Israel. Our special relationship was not forged, as it was with Great Britain, in two world wars, not to mention a common language and, in significant respects, culture. It is based on warmth, emotion, shared values – and, not to be dismissed, a potent domestic lobby.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.