Serious Division

I don't see any more serious division in our country than we had in the Civil War and at other times.
--Richard J. Daley

Time Wastes

I will not argue the matter. Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return--more every thing presses on--and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it, are preludes to the eternal separation which we are shortly to make!
--Laurence Sterne

Fragmentation

The thing about fragmentation is, it satisfies only part of the audience experience. Yes, it is exactly what you want, but it can be lonely.
--Nancy Nall

Community

If I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that's part of being a community.
--Barack Obama

Vampires

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain."
--Bill Maher

Wit

There's a helluva distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
--Dorothy Parker

Forecasting

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
--John Kenneth Galbraith

Like Storms

Thoughts are themselves like storms. They go from pleasant to dark just like that, and no mastery of the science of Brownian motion is going to enable us to predict their course and dominate them.
--Justin E. H. Smith

What The Hell

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
--David Foster Wallace

Put Off

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
--Pablo Picasso

Our Job

Our job is not to protect the private health insurance industry.
--Sen. Bernie Sanders

By Art

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.
--Elizabeth Bowen

Goddess

There are two goddesses in your heart. The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.
--Joe Vigil

Smarter

People who write competently, never mind stylishly, are indicating by their example that they respect writing. People who respect writing are more likely to read. And readers are smarter, there I said it.
--Nancy Nall

Intimacy

That's what real intimacy is about. Sharing secrets with one another--about what's on one's mind inside and out.
--Julie Gottman

Both

It is no more meaningful to say that Stalin and George Orwell were both socialists than to observe that Martin Luther King Jr. and George Wallace were both Christians.
--Andrew O'Hehir

Bubble

The real estate bubble was also a crime scene. The only trouble is delineating where crime ended and social policy began.
--Tom Vanderbilt

Secret Identity

Honest question, from someone less conversant in the superhero genre than you might think: Do superheroes need to hide their secret identities even from...each other? I mean, did Superman and Batman hang around the Justice League and Batman would say, "You know what really bugs me? The liberal media! Like, have you read that Clark Kent guy? He's so obviously biased!" and then Superman would say "Well, what about that jerk Bruce Wayne? Inherited all that money and is he doing anything worthwhile with it? He's probably putting most of it into overseas tax dodges!" That all just seems awkward.
--Joshua Fruhlinger

Captivated

If people were as captivated by public affairs as they are by erotic ones, the economy would be very strong.
--Magdalena

Details

Attend to the details. Teach your children manners. Write cogent paragraphs. Drive carefully. And make a good potato salad, one with some crunch, maybe accompanied by a fried drumstick with crackly skin--the humble potato and the stupid chicken, ennobled by diligent cooking--and is this not the meaning of our beautiful country, to take what is common and enable it to become beautiful?
--Garrison Keillor

Never To Arrive

I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno's arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.
--Pico Iyer