Bari Weiss

"I am so curious about why certain people feel in their bones how thin the veneer of civilization is, and why other people are so nonchalant about it."

"[About cowardice in the leadership of institutions:] What we've seen is that you don't actually need a majority of people inside an institution to agree with these ideas for these ideas to gain force. [You need] a tiny minority and you need cowardice at the top. Cowardice at the top, that is the key ingredient. You need people at the top who are willing to sell out the authority of the institution and the values of the institution that have taken decades, sometimes centuries, to accrue. Basically for the short-term benefit of not being called a bad name."

"In the end of the day, the reason that I left The New York Times is that yes because I was being bullied, yes because I couldn't do my job, both true things, but ultimately it was because I really believe that the fight for liberalism, and I don't mean that in the partisan sense but I mean [the values], that is more important than any amount of popularity, than any amount of accolades on Twitter, than anything else. Than anything else. And so I had to leave the institution in order to fight for liberalism. And that I see as the mission of my life, I guess you can say."

"[About the loss of The New York Times as an institution] I will say that I spent months mourning that. It is catastrophic. But there are things in history that have been more catastrophic. And that's the kind of perspective that I'm trying to keep. Because if I spend all day looking at the wreckage, and more than just looking at the wreckage trying desperately to try and shore up something that is so clearly rotten, I would spend my life in grief."

"[About covering the story of Jamie Reed's work at a pediatric gender clinic in Missouri:] When you break a story and other publications follow it, as happens a lot of the time with The Free Press, it is very professionally gratifying. But the reason that this story was especially important and gratifying for us to have substantiated was because it is exactly the kind of story that we exist to pursue. It is exactly the kind of morally naughty story in which journalists avoid pursuing it because they know they will be punished or smeared for doing so. That is why The Free Press exists. [...] And just covering those topics, not in an histrionic way, but in a sober, fair-minded, honest, frank way that treats readers like adults."