Richard Cohen Quotes

I think daily that the country's future is being thrown to the wind.

Iraq is falling apart.

By 2007, Iraqi society had completely collapsed.

Something is wanting, and something must be done, or we shall be involved in all the horror of failure, and civil war without a prospect of its termination.

What would happen if we withdrew? Anarchy and confusion.

As soon as control eases, there is chaos. [Yi fang, jiu luan.]

The crisis is not far ahead ... a dismemberment of this Republic I now consider inevitable.

It is when empires begin to fall, that they tend to cause the most mayhem.

I have arrived at only a few sure conclusions: 1. For us, (South) America is ungovernable. 2. He who serves a revolution ploughs the sea. 3. The only thing we can do in (South) America is emigrate. 4. This country will eventually fall into the hands of the unbridled mob, and will proceed to almost imperceptible petty tyrannies of all complexions and races. 5. Devoured as we are by every kind of crime and annhilated by ferocity Europeans will not go to the trouble of conquering us. 6. If it were possible for any part of the world to revert to primordial chaos, that would be (South) America’s final state.

You see the problem of an unstable White House from the outside and worry about it. But from the inside, it is 50 times worse.

We are worried that rebels are taking control in many countries, and look at the results now. Are you satisfied as an American ? What are the results ? Nothing. Very bad - nothing good.

Donald Trump hasn't blown us up yet. But he terrifies me. For one thing, the incompetence. He doesn't have any real understanding of how the presidency works or even how Washington works. The only comfort I have is that he is so imcompetent that he can't do anything to cause a real problem.

The meanings get lost and the teachings get tossed and you don't know what you're going to do next.

Albania in 1994 was the strangest place I've ever seen. It was like walking into the looking glass: falling apart, paranoid people, anarchy, no one farming, full of thieves. It was beyond any Third World country. They were living in their own private nightmare.

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.

There are still people - the majority on the stage, they want to topple [Bashar] Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will then be in charge of Syria.

I have always thought that Donald Trump was an incredibly clever politician, but he's - at some point he's going to become unwound and maybe this is it.

Modern man has both feet firmly planted in mid-air

Terror?often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking.

Democracy is an insecure landscape.

Our country is a mess. We don't even know what to look for anymore.

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.

Out of regime change you get chaos. From the chaos you have seen repeatedly the rise of radical Islam. So we get this profession of, oh, my goodness, they want to do something about terrorism and yet they're the problem because they allow terrorism to arise out of that chaos.