Quotes by Clifford Cohen

You can do anything…but before you can do anything, you have to do something.

Sometimes, if your opponent is determined to win the battle, let him win the wrong battle.

Regarding war and peace—the seed of each is planted in the other.

Regarding war and peace—the seeds of each are planted in the other.

All too often, our elegant political theories amount to nothing more than ideology triumphing over common sense.

We live in an age of equivocal competency: if you want, you can be a competent dictator, a competent self-promoter, a competent terrorist. Just because you can do something well does not mean you should be doing it.

Why do the powerful always insist on having a “back story” to justify whatever they do? Why can’t they—just once—do something for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do, in itself, for reasons understood and accepted by all? In politics, laws are passed to secretly serve hidden agendas, for without such agendas many lawmakers would never find the motivation to support anything at all.

We recognize authority based on whether we feel we could attain authority by the rules by which the authority was obtained.

Cooler heads prevail while things spin completely out of control.

Note from Alien cookbook: “The more intelligent the human is, the better it tastes.

If you want to impress someone, simply make up a vocation and preface it with the words “molecular” or “theoretical” (as in “molecular biologist” or “theoretical physicist”). After you do this no one will question the veracity of anything you say—whether it is related to your putative vocation or not.

Just because you say you will do something does not mean that you are also willing to do that thing. Ensuring that both things are true is especially important in the matter of either making or receiving a proposal of marriage.

If you can’t be brave in the face of adversity, at least be practical.

Amazing how too much passion in one part of your life can destroy passion in other parts of your life.

If someone tells you that they’re called “blueberries” because they’re berries and they’re blue—believe them.

Sex can be the result of love, but never the cause of it.

Some people say I raised a good child. I like to think of it as my child raised a good parent.

A psychologist’s job (if it’s done well) is to get you to seriously laugh at yourself.

There’s no arguing with a song that writes itself.

You have to know you don’t know before you can know.