What We Share

Our opponent says that there is a real America. But I am sorry--there aren't a real America and an unreal America. Soldiers in the trenches don't ask each other if they are red or blue. You can support the war and be a patriot, and not support the war and still be a patriot. We are tired of these old divisions and ways of separating Americans from each other. We are all Americans and what we share is greater than what divides us.

--Barack Obama

The Right Ending

The right ending is an open door you can't see too far out of.

--Michael Ondaatje

Live Like

If you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat.

--Harry S Truman

Fight Hard Enough

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

--Paul Wellstone

Every Age

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

--Samuel Johnson

Imperfect Creatures

As a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don't always act with justice uppermost on our minds.

--Barack Obama

Round Peg, Square Hole

Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year's campaign into the square holes of past political wars.

--Frank Rich

What's the Use

What's the use of being a politician if you can't make a living at being a hypocrite?

--Norman Mailer

Not Very Unreasonable

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

--Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations)

Slower to Trust

Voters are slower to trust you with big things if they see a lack of skill in small things.

--Peggy Noonan

Owes a Return

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

--John Stuart Mill

Everyone Is Watching

My attitude is, the more I'm in public, I don't even want to pick my nose. I'm assuming everyone is watching.

--Barack Obama (interview with Katie Couric, October 16, 2008)

No Meaning

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

--C. S. Lewis

Existing Model

In order to change something, don't struggle to change the existing model. Create a new model and make the old one obsolete.

--Buckminster Fuller

That's What Happens

I don't take any of it personally, and I don't take most of it seriously. That's what happens in politics.

--Hillary Clinton

Hope

Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.

--Carl Sandburg

Lies

What's the major cause of the nation's financial crisis? Lies; a river of lies emptied into a sea of mendacity, sucked up into the sky again by a great hurricane of deceit, and rained back down upon us in a deluge of prevarication.

--Glenn W. Smith

In Its Essence

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Scare You

Some things will scare you so bad that you hurt yourself.

--Molly Ivins

Rules

Rules cannot take the place of character.

--Alan Greenspan

Money Destroys

If the whole country is going to pot, and it certainly is, I think you could graph the decline not only in morals, but in a sense of social éclat and social standards--I think you could plot the decline right next to the rise of the Dow Jones--the higher the Dow, the lower the standards. Money destroys all other values.

--Norman Mailer (March 1999)

Secular Miracle

That a piece of paper of no intrinsic value should pass for good money the world over is nothing less than a secular miracle.

--James Grant

Men Who Bite Dogs

The press likes the unusual. The man bite dog story. The maverick senators who do weird stuff. But just because men who bite dogs make for good copy doesn't make biting a dog a good idea.

--Matthew Yglesias

Toothache

When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is happiness. But later, when we don't have a toothache, we don't treasure our non-toothache.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Not There

We learned a painful lesson in the 1930s and today: The invisible hand often seems invisible because it's not there.

--Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics)

Acknowledge Luck

I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

--Paul Newman

Special Skills

Sarah knows how to field-dress a moose. I know how to castrate a calf. Neither of those things has anything at all to do with this election. But since we know so much about Sarah's special skills, I wanted to make sure you knew about mine too.

--Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge (D-Iowa)

If You Must

If you must break the law, do it to seize power. In all other cases observe it.

--Julius Caesar

Private Banks

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

--Thomas Jefferson

Progress

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

--C. S. Lewis

The Sequel

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership's implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher's resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another's final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we've seen, only sure we're primed for the sequel.

--Jonathan Lethem

Fundamental

The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.

--President Herbert Hoover (October 24, 1929)

Socialism

The GOP does believe in socialism: Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses.

--Anonymous

Mediocre

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

--Jean Giraudoux

Oblivious

As we've been writing for several years, the greatest threat to economic growth has been reckless monetary policy. Yet both the Bush Treasury and John McCain's campaign seem oblivious to the monetary roots of our current economic troubles.

--The Wall Street Journal editoral page

Terms With Stupidity

It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.

--Frank Zappa

Knows More

She [Sarah Palin] knows more about energy that probably anyone else in the United States of America.

--John McCain

A Hard Job

If you see a whole thing--it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

--Ursula K. LeGuin

Wreckage

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

--Margaret Mitchell

Not Seasons Enough

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

--Yehuda Amichai

Bicycle Prayers

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

--Emo Philips

A Blessing

As far as I'm concerned Barack Obama is a "Baruch," which means a blessing. He is a blessing to the United States Senate, to America, and to our shared hopes for better, safer tomorrows for all our families.

--Joe Lieberman (March 2006)

Blows My Mind

They've been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn't happen! We don't say, "He shares our values, so let's hire him." That's absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.

--Mark DeMoss (former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell)

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