Quotes from Richard Cohen

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.

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.

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

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

Heroism is a matter of choice.

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

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

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.

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

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.

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.

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

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.

Republicans and others who are in anguish over the possibility of socialized medicine ought to have to explain their ideology to a mother with a sick newborn. They ought to have to explain how this nation can debate health care and not mention how abysmal ours is.

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.

George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.

As a presidential candidate, Trump seems heaven-sent just to make fools out of Republicans.

Large government is inevitably inefficient, but so, too, is large private enterprise.

The concept of cultural appropriation is nothing less than an intellectual fence: Keep out.

Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in 'Casablanca.' Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman, and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age.

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

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

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.