An Account

It's important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. It's also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.
--Rebecca Solnit

You People

I have to rant and rave. I have to keep you people going. Otherwise you'll fall asleep on me.
--Donald Trump (in Connecticut, April 23, 2016)

Progress

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
--Abraham Lincoln (1855)

Great

With great ignorance comes great confidence.
--Shannon Wheeler

Right & Wrong

Have you ever loved anyone more because they were right and you were wrong?
--Jeannette Bessinger

Seek

Dogs seek our giving hands in the same way that flowers seek the sun.
--Dana Jennings

Drugs

Since the desire of man to alter his state of consciousness is as old as human history, and technology continues to provide a breathtaking array of drugs capable of producing everything from oblivion to nirvana, I think it safe to assume that we may never win a "war" against drugs.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Dead Ideas

Ideological necrophilia is the blind fixation with dead ideas. It turns out this pathology is more common in its political rather than sexual form. Turn on your TV tonight and I bet you will see some politician passionately in love with an idea that has already been tried and failed, or defending beliefs that have been proven false by incontrovertible evidence.
--Moises Naim

Chase

I can't assume that the money chase didn't alter me in some ways...your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent.
--Barack Obama

Changed

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
--James Baldwin

Need Each Other

Every spot in the universe is unique. There will always be a piece of it you haven't seen yet and a piece that you have seen but that nobody else has. There is no place to stand if you want to claim universal knowledge. We all need each other in order to overlap our knowledge.
--Dennis Overbye

A Cause

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
--Abraham Lincoln

Bigotry

Bigotry is an illness. It creates a form of dementia and delusional perceptions.
--G. E. Morris

Weird

It's weird. I completely disagree with Angela Merkel's policy. And the more she pursues it, the more I respect her.
--A friend of Daniel Kehlmann (German novelist)

Bipolar

We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. That is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.
--Maira Kalman

Uncomfortable

Uncomfortable though it may be, our growth as human beings requires that we examine the ways in which we justify our sometimes inhumane actions and our very human tendencies to accept an authority beyond our own hearts.
--Suzanne Clothier

Money

It's often said that we reveal ourselves every time we discuss and handle money. Are we generous? Parsimonious? Greedy? Do we exaggerate the truth? Are we careless? Do we rationalize our own actions? Look to the personal ledger, and all will be uncovered.
--Helaine Olen

Winning

I think it is very rude of Sanders to keep winning while we are trying to have a conversation about how his campaign is finished.
--Dan Desert

Judge

If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.
--Antonin Gregory Scalia

Pretend

Clearly, unintended consequences ensue when animals with brains pretend that they're angels with bodies.
--Jack Mahoney

Here

Be here now.
--Ram Dass