Our Hope Of Evolution

If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine. If an individual can't work in solidarity with his fellows, it's his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We've been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.

-- Ursula K. Le Guin (21 October 1929-), US-based author, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 12

Paranoid

I get paid to be paranoid, and so do you.

-- Philip Burdette, federal security director at the Baltimore airport, giving a pep talk to security workers, New York Times, 23 November 2010

Gratitude

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

-- Thornton Wilder (17 April 1897 - 7 December 1975) American playwright and novelist

Trickle Down

I think that people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it ... The rich are always going to say that, you know, "Just give us more money, and we'll go out and spend more, and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you." But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

-- Warren Buffett (1930-), American investor, industrialist, and philanthropist, on his opposition to renewing Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, ABC News Interview, 21 November 2010

Wired Differently

Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing. The worry is we're raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.

-- Michael Rich, executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health, on how digital technology affects children, New York Times, 22 November 2010

Teenagers Society Deserves

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

-- John Boynton Priestley (1894-1984), English playwright, novelist, and broadcaster

Have To Settle

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.

-- Lido Anthony (Lee) Iacocca (15 October 1924-), American industrialist, former Chrysler CEO

Lame Duck

And I begin by suggesting that our session does not necessarily have to be a "lame duck," that we have the capacity to respond to the many pressing problems of the country, as we choose. We can spread our wings, and we can fly.

-- Senator Arlen Spector (D-PA), on the lame duck session of Congress, 16 November 2010

Annoying Habits

It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!

-- Merrill Markoe (1951-), author, television writer, and comedian

For So Long

We haven't seen each other for so long, I have so much to tell you.

-- Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's pro-democracy leader, speaking to supporters after spending seven and a half years under house arrest, New York Times, 14 November 2010

Pigs Fly

Given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.

-- Woody Page, Denver sports columnist

Borrowed Money

I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money. And, at the end of the day, that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.

-- Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, coming out in favor of letting the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire, Meet the Press, 1 August 2010

Not Jobs?

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

-- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview with National Journal's Major Garrett, 23 October 2010

Fists

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

-- George Jean Nathan

Seldom Happy

A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others.

-- Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar (1926-), American self-help author and speaker, See You at the Top (2000)

Boom

I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747. That's why we haven't put them in our airport.

-- Rafi Sela, Israeli airport security expert, referring to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, addressing Canada's Parliament, 22 April 2010

Motivation

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Thirty-fourth President of the USA

Dissolve And Abolish

Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five, years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree.

-- Joshua Abraham Norton (also known as Emperor Norton I) (c. 1819 - 1880), eccentric resident of San Francisco who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States, "Imperial Decree" dated 12 August 1869, published in The San Francisco Herald 13 August 1869

Solitary Suffrage

The existence of such a government as ours for any length of time is a full proof of a general dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole body of the people. And what object or consideration more pleasing than this can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information, and benevolence.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the people, who govern ourselves; and candid men will acknowledge that in such cases choice would have little advantage to boast of over lot or chance.

-- John Adams (1735-1826), 2nd President of the US, inaugural address

Big Night

We're going to have a big night on Tuesday night - a really big night.

-- Representative John A Boehner (R-OH), who is poised to become speaker if Republicans win the House, New York Times, 31 October 2010