The 20 Best Quotes of 2016

18) “Islam has a problem with terror committed in its name that no other major religion shares at the moment. Period. End of story.” — Michael Graham

17) “If the national GOP is a vehicle for ensuring that John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have a car and driver and a Gulf emir-sized retinue, then it’s very effective. If it’s a vehicle for advancing conservative principles, then it’s a rusted-up lemon on cinder blocks.” — Mark Steyn

14) “If the Germans don’t think defending Germany is worth German money and lives, why is it worth American money and lives?” — Kurt Schlichter

12) “Republican America is now so vast that a traveler could drive 3,600 miles across the continent, from Key West, Fla., to the Canadian border crossing at Porthill, Idaho, without ever leaving a state under total GOP control.” — Reid J. Epstein and Janet Hook

11) “Our universities are now the most hostile place in the country to actual thought.” — Ace

10 “You know what a gun-free zone is to a sicko? That’s bait.” — Donald Trump

9) “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.

I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America. There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love.” – Anthony Bourdain

6) “Feminism is always a lecture, never a debate.” — Stacy McCain

5) “When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly.” — Glenn Reynolds

4) “Whenever a politician says he searched his conscience, you can assume it was a very quick search of a very small space.” — Charles Krauthammer

3) “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed…In our society, now it’s just first — who cares, get it out there. We don’t care who it hurts. We don’t care who we destroy. We don’t care if it’s true.” — Denzel Washington

2) “You don’t know a tree is hollow until you push hard against it and it falls. The establishments of both parties did not know, a year ago, that they were hollow trees. They thought themselves strong because they always had been, and people think what has been true will continue. Then suddenly the tree is pushed and falls. To me that is the symbol, the image of 2016: the hollowed trees and how easily they fell.” — Peggy Noonan

1) “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously but not literally.” — Salena Zeno on Donald Trump