Less Fun

It's simply less fun pulling up to the stoplight in a Hummer than it used to be. It's a change in norms.

-- Robert Barbera, chief economist at research and trading firm ITG, on the shift in consumer tastes created by the recession, New York Times, 29 August 2009

Too Much

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

-- Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791

What Sticks

We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

-- Michael Snow, Wikimedia board chairman, on steps to impose editorial review on articles about living people, New York Times, 25 August 2009

RIP Ted Kennedy

We are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it.

-- Edward Moore (Ted) Kennedy (22 February 1932 - 25 August 2009), US Senator (D-MA) from November 1962 until his death, speaking in August 2008

Enlightened

It is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient.

-- Felix Adler (1851-1933), American rationalist intellectual, The Religion of Duty (1905)

Party Of "No"

"Just say 'no'." This is going to be our chant from now until election day. In fact, we've been saying 'no' for a long time.

-- Rep John Shimkus (R-IL), at the Illinois State Fair, on the Republican agenda, 20 August 2009

Bottom

We've found the bottom.

-- Mark Fleming, chief economist for data firm First American CoreLogic, on housing prices, New York Times, 29 July 2009

Seminar

It has been the largest seminar in my life and I have been the sole student. I connect back to the people because I have heard them, and I have heard some very harsh things.

-- Ashraf Ghani, on his presidential campaign in Afghanistan, New York Times, 14 August 2009

Clad In Verse

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.

-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), satirist

RIP Les Paul

It has to be said, we must all own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets. This man, by his genius, made the road that we still travel today. I don't know how he did it, but I'm so grateful he did.

-- Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards

A Game Of Cards

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

-- Jawaharlal Nehru

The Cost Of A Thing

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), naturalist and author

Sameness

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

-- Petrarch

Still Got Food

If you lose your job tomorrow, you've still got food.

-- Lloyd Romriell, of Annis, Idaho, who has begun raising chickens, New York Times, 4 August 2009