The Mosque

Is there any reason to oppose the mosque that isn't bigoted, or demagogic, or unconstitutional? None that I've heard or read.
--Michael Kinsley

A Clash

We must understand that what the terrorists seek is a clash of civilizations. We must do everything possible to avoid giving them propaganda victories in their attempt to create a cosmic war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Muslim civilization. The fight is not between the West and Islam.
--Jeffrey Goldberg

Complexity

It seems to me that we have allowed our political culture and media to drift into a kind of senility. It is almost impossible to believe we are capable as a nation of having a national argument that has any level of complexity at all. Discussions of Keynesian policy, climate change and energy policy, even the life and death decisions of how and when we use military power--seem abandoned if the argument cannot be made in 30 seconds or less.
--Darrix Philadelphia

Pretend

You can pretend to be serious, but you can't pretend to be witty.
--Gemli Boston

Simple

The psychology is incredibly simple: When the government gives me something, it is an expression of communal decency. When it gives you something, it is capitulation to a bloodsucking parasite.
--Dick Dworkin

A Vacation

Let's give God a vacation.
He must be tired of it all.
Rigging the game, taking the blame,
Twenty four hours a day on call.
He gave us the power to reason.
He put the spark in the clay.
So let's let him go for a season
and start making sense today.
--Mose Allison

How Delicate We Are

It's amazing to me how delicate we are and how strong we are. What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die--that's that.
--Laura Linney

Hate

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
--Hermann Hesse

Monsters and Miracles

We are a boatful of monsters and miracles, hoping that, somehow, we can survive a world in which all hands are against us. A world which, by all evidence, will end extremely soon. Yet, I posit we are in a universe which favors stories. A universe in which no story can ever truly end; in which there can be only continuances. If we are in such a universe, as I hope, then we may have a chance.
--Reed Richards

So NYC

Kagan is so Manhattan, Scalia is so Queens, Ginsburg is so Brooklyn and Sotomayor is so Bronx. They adopted in their identities the whole New York sensibility.
--Joan Biskupic

Destiny

The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed.
--Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin

Long For

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Interconnected

We are a nation of people interconnected in every day life. If the gulf between the haves and have-nots continue to widen, it means the social fabric that gives us resilience and strength will falter. The pain that most of us feel will eventually be shared by all.
--Spence Malvern

Belong To...

So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me--each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other.
--Buckminster Fuller