Key Criteria

I think about whether that person who I select would be most prepared to take my place. And that would be the key criteria.

--John McCain (April 2008)

Reality TV

Politics as reality TV. Watch as we put this hockey mom and beauty contest runner-up into the second most powerful political position in civilization! Will she make it? Tune in and find out!

--Flown Muse (comment on Huffington Post, August 30, 2008)

Choice

Behavior is a choice, even if fantasy and imagination are uncontrollable.

--Camille Paglia

The Impossible

We can
Each of us
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.

--Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)

Nuance

We don't do nuance well in politics.

--Barack Obama

Adventure

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

--G. K. Chesterton

The Last Time

When you remember something, you don't remember the thing itself--you just remember the last time you remembered it.

--John Barlow

Appear Bright

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

--Anonymous

Good and Happy

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy--I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

--Bertrand Russell

Roswell, N.M.

The Republicans will hit him hard and low in September and portray him as a Muslim opium dealer who infiltrated this country via Roswell, N.M.

--Garrison Keilor

Have Forever

Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have forever?

--Alain de Botton

The Truth

The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.

--John Edwards

Technology 1-2-3

1) Everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal.

2) Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it.

3) Anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

--Douglas Adams

One By One

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

--Charles Mackay

Pointless

The more the universe is comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.

--Steven Weinberg (Nobel laureate physicist at the University of Texas)

Smart Kids

Children are smarter than any of us. Know how I know that? I don't know one child with a full time job and children.

--Bill Hicks

Boundless

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

--Frank O'Hara

All Creation

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.

--Abraham Lincoln

Slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

--Emily Dickinson

Go Buy

If we all join hands and go buy a new SUV, everything will be all right.

--Robert McTeer (then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, April 2001)

To The Bottom

Rather than trying to stay on top of things, I am trying to get to the bottom of things.

--Donald Knuth

Some Control

We don't find happiness in more gadgets and experiences. We do find happiness in having some control of our time and work, a chance for real leisure, in the escape from the uncertainties of war, poverty, and corruption, and in a chance to pursue individual freedoms--all of which come with increased affluence.

--Kevin Kelly

Reinvention

This may be a lousy time to own the shares of legacy newspaper companies, but it's a great time for communication among human beings. Never has so much been possible, so easily. Reinvention trumps loss.

--Scott Burns

Do Nothing

Procrastination feeds on distractions. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else.

--Paul Graham

Accept Myself

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
--Carl Rogers

Rudimentary

Getting shot down over Vietnam may not be a qualification for president in 2008, but surely a rudimentary facility with a laptop is.

--Frank Rich

Escape

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

--Alan Saporta

One Success

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.

--Christopher Morley

Sky-High

In a world of sky-high transportation costs, outsourcing production to where labor is cheapest might not always make economic sense.

--Andrew Leonard

Carbon Footprint

"Carbon footprint" is to your physical being what "soul" is to your spiritual being.

--Verlyn Klinkenborg

Misty Morning

A misty morning does not signify a cloudy day.

--Ancient proverb

Stories Dying

I worry about stories dying, replaced by stuff. Content for platforms does not a story make. Today, you arrive anywhere and surf the Net. Being "always on" is being always off, to something.

--Roger Cohen

Getting Old

Getting old is not for sissies.

--Bette Davis

He Needs Money

Religion easily--has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man...living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

--George Carlin

Way Station

Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.

--Channing Pollack

Internal Debate

I had an internal debate. Because I knew that the A.P. was going to take a picture, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet. But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking.

--Barack Obama

Pursuit of Pleasure

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

--William Channin

Escape

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

--Alan Saporta

Blow It Out

If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out.

--Louis Armstrong

A Whim

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

--Anonymous

The Future

There are two classes of people who tell what is going to happen in the future: those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Basis for Running

We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country, and I intend to make that my basis for running over the period of the next few months.

--Robert F. Kennedy (June 1968)

To The End

We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.

--Rep. Charles B. Rangel

It's About Empathy

People are always asking actors, "How are you like this character?" But that's not what acting's about. It's not about identification. It's about empathy for people, for the human condition.

--Julianne Moore

Three Opinions

There are three opinions you can't voice in America without being dismissed as a crackpot, if not worse: The '60s experiments in consciousness expansion were basically a good thing; organized religion is oppressive; children and teen-agers have a right to enjoy their sexuality.

--Ellen Willis

The Light

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.

--Hafiz

Good Guilt

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don't suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness.

--Ron Rosenbaum

We All

In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

--John F. Kennedy

Plants Have Exploited Us

Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires--even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty--to advance their own interests.

--Michael Pollan

The Story Here

The story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are maniuplated by the forces of money and power.

--Leonard Pitts, Jr.

10,000 Ways

I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.

--Ben Franklin

Ugly Place

Silicon Valley is an ugly place. Not physically, but, for all its gleeful output, socially. We're talking about the global mecca for antisocial, intensely competitive workaholics who aim to beat each other at achieving obscene wealth.

--Farhad Manjoo

Just Go

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN'S HAIKU

Our views are made by
Our definitions of them.
Just go ride your bike.

--John Bell

Conventional Thinking

I don't want to go with conventional thinking. I don't care if it's always been done this way. Now, that might be the right way to do it. But that's not the reason to do it.

--Mike D'Antoni

Jaw Not War

Jaw, jaw, is better than war, war.

--Winston Churchill

Solitude

She loved solitude, but she also loved being with people, and a life spent entirely in solitude made no sense to her.

--Brian Morton

Wealthy White Man

If you don't acknowledge that being a wealthy white man with the right ancestors blesses you with the desirable sort of inequality, how can you fix the undesirable sort of inequality?

--Maureen Dowd

Who Are We?

The overriding question here is simple: Who are we? This election represents a giant mirror, a chance to find out who we are as a people. The issue is whether America is still the scared, reactionary, sclerotic, profoundly creaky nation that it has been for the last eight years, or whether it's ready to shrug off the Bush era and begin anew. It comes down to whether America is old or young.

--Gary Kamiya

The Soul of Marriage

The soul of marriage is created by small acts, small words, and small, everyday interactions.

--Thomas Moore

Overt and Unashamed

The attacks will be overt and unashamed, except for the National Review types who will phrase their racism with their usual apparent cognitive dissonance: "Since I know I'm not a racist, I can say whatever racist thing pops into my head, and if you think the racist thing I just said was racist that proves you are the real racist."

--Lance Mannion

Experience, A Spider Web

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

--Henry James

What's the Point

And what's the point of all this excess wealth we have been creating if it doesn't lead to more leisure time? Surely that is the point of earning more than you need? But it seems the wealthier we get, the harder and longer we have to work. It's all upside down.

--Dharmaruci

Hope Alone

Of course, hope alone is not enough, but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.

--Tim Shriver

Problems and Beauty

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

--Buckminster Fuller

Level of Fame

They should draw an equation: What level of fame do you need to achieve to keep doing what you want? Because you don't want any more than that.

--Tina Fey

Deep Wisdom

There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.

--Elizabeth A. Behnke

A World

A world of made is not a world of born.

--e.e. cummings

All Your Questions

In the solitude of your mind are the answers to all your questions about life. You must take the time to ask and listen.

--Bawa Mahaiyaddeen

Food

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Let The Reader Catch

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.

--Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

A Pack

History is, after all, only a pack of tricks we play on the dead.

--Voltaire

Finished

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

--Benjamin Franklin

Closest Non-Human Relationship

A home is often the closest non-human relationship we have in our lives. It can represent your identity, your autonomy, your spirituality.

--Lois Vitt

Another Language

To know another language is to have a second soul.

--Charlemagne

More Than Human

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.

--Thomas Jefferson

Vanity Swells

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain--at least in a poor country like Russia--and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

--Leon Trotsky

Comments, Facts

Comments are free, but facts are sacred.

--Charles Prestwich Scott

The Trouble

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

--Will Durant

Take It

Take it easy, but take it.

--Anonymous

A Full Hour

Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.

--St. Francis de Sales

Affects All

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sexual Orgies

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

--Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Understand Everything

It has taken me all my life to understand it is not necessary to understand everything.

--Rene Coty

Memory

As a protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than law. When the memory of the 1929 disaster failed, law and regulation no longer sufficed.

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Mystify

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

--Douglas Adams

Brothers and Sisters

Historians and novelists are kin, but they're more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other's clothes.

--Jill Lepore

What We Bear

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

--Victor Frankl

Mere Wealth

Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

--John Pierpont Morgan

Introspection

People at the top need a relaxed perspective, which gives judgment and balance. Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.

--Camille Paglia

House of Cards

Banks and brokerages are a house of cards built on the confidence of clients, creditors and counterparties. If you take chunks out of that confidence, things can go awry pretty quickly. It could happen to any one of the brokers.

--David Trone (brokerage analyst)

Nothing Human

Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention.

--Garrison Keillor

Doubt and Belief

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

--Henri Poincaré

Local Group

The fully realized man does not identify with the local group.

--Abraham Maslow

Died Out

If men never succumbed to the attractions of women, then the human species would have died out a long time ago.

--Daniel Spitzer (neurosurgeon, brother of Eliot)

Modified Ape

After all, it is as respectable to be modified ape as to be modified dirt.

--T.H. Huxley

Squandered

We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us.

--George Carlin

Answered Prayers

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

--Truman Capote

What Light I Have

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.

--Abraham Lincoln

I Love Science

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

--Robert Sapolsky

Addiction

Politicians have become completely addicted to money, so trying to change the system is like trying to take heroin from a heroin addict.

--John McCain