Bret Stephens Quotes

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Bret Stephens

Profession : Journalist

Birth : November 21, 1973

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.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

When you work at 'The Wall Street Journal,' the coins of the realm are truth and trust - the latter flowing exclusively from the former.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

If a public figure tells a whopping lie once in his life, it'll haunt him into his grave. If he lies morning, noon and night, it will become almost impossible to remember any one particular lie.

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

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 president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

Barack Obama is probably the coolest president this country will ever have.

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

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 for speech we dislike, and reserve our harshest penalties only for the worst offenders.

Bret Stephens

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.

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens

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

Bret Stephens