The normalization of Trump is one indicator that there may be less to the populist insurrection than imagined.
— Charles Krauthammer
I don't think the West needs to apologize - or pay - for having invented the steam engine.
For every moment of triumph, there is an unequal and opposite feeling of despair. Take that iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over the prostrate, semiconscious wreckage of Sonny Liston. Great photo. Now think of Liston. Do the pleasure/pain calculus.
Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it belongs to a coequal branch.
In the end, what brings civilizations down is when the elites lose confidence in the rightness of their cause.
If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying, 'Well, I got swindled here.'
Fight for what you know to be right. Don't give up.
If you control one house of Congress, you cannot abolish something like Obamacare, no matter how much pressure you apply.
I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.
Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.
Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.
The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.
Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.
Ted Cruz is a patriot. He believes in what he does. He's done marvels in mobilizing conservatives, mobilizing Americans concerned about the direction of the ever-expanding entitlement state under Obama, and particularly the threat it is to freedom. I disagree with his tactics, but I agree entirely with his objectives.
I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.
The Internet is a cauldron of anger every day, every year, election year or not, with unemployment at 10 percent or at two percent. It isn't exactly a good index of what's happening.
In retrospect, the populist panic may have been overblown. Regarding Brexit, for example, the shock exaggerated its meaning. Because it was so unexpected, it became a sensation.
As most who have engaged in competitive sports know, there's nothing to match the amplitude of emotion brought by losing.
Ronald Reagan was so self-contained and impenetrable that his official biographer was practically driven mad trying to figure him out.
Trump's relentless public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was clearly intended to get him to resign.
There was once a philosopher who said, 'I don't believe in God, but I fear him greatly.' That's about where I am.
You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition: Once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.
I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life - full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living.
A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.
In the liberal remake of 'Casablanca,' the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to 'round up the usual weapons.' It's always the weapon and never the shooter.
It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.
I don't know about you, but I lie awake nights worrying about Canadian uranium. I know these people. I grew up there. You have no idea what they're capable of doing. If Sidney Crosby hadn't scored that goal to win the Olympic gold medal, there's no telling what might have ensued.
I'm a former Red Sox fan, now fully rehabilitated.
The world is a Hobbesian state of nature in which the struggle for domination is the very essence of international life.
Ron Paul is not going to be president, so we don't have to worry about who's going to be in his cabinet.
Chess: It's like alcohol. It's a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.
Obama and the Democrats were so critical of what Bush did, the interrogations, the secret prisons, Guantanamo and all of that, and even the war on terror. Obama won't use the word. He's made war on the war on terror.
Trump's behavior is deeply disturbing but hardly surprising. His mercurial nature is not the product of a post-inaugural adder sting at Mar-a-Lago. It's been there all along. And the American electorate chose him nonetheless.
When the Cleveland Cavaliers lost the 2015 NBA Finals to Golden State, LeBron James sat motionless in the locker room, staring straight ahead, still wearing his game jersey, for 45 minutes after the final buzzer. Here was a guy immensely wealthy, widely admired, at the peak of his powers - yet stricken, inconsolable.
Trump is a systemic stress test.
Every civilization is founded on sins - every single one. Dispossession, violence, appropriation. What distinguishes civilizations are the ones who rise above it.
The way that Trump spoke about the outside world was the most aggressive, most hyper-nationalist, and in some ways most hostile of any inaugural address I think since the Second World War.
Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with.
Never leave a crossword unfinished.
I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation's destiny.
I would write my editorials using a manual typewriter in pitch-black darkness... I would produce the whole thing without having seen the text.
To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something - to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.
When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community.
I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That's the day I showed up for work at 'The New Republic' magazine.
I would say I see myself as a psychiatrist in remission.
So far as I'm concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.
