Freedom To Offend

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

-- Salman Rushdie, writer (b. 1947)

Grand Things

This positions us as a grand city where grand things happen.

-- Alejandro Rojas Diaz, Mexico City's tourism secretary, who organized an event at which 12,937 people danced to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in pursuit of a world record, New York Times, 8 September 2009

End-Of-The-World Switch

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

-- Terry Pratchett, novelist (b. 1948)

Obama School Speech

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

-- President Barack Obama, addressing students from Wakefield HS, 8 September 2009

Vindicated?

He likes to rub it in to the West that he was vindicated, that he's becoming an internationally recognized figure again.

-- Dirk J. Vandewalle, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, on Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's planned September trip to New Jersey, New York Times, 26 August 2009

Play

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion.

-- Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

Youth And Middle-Age

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author, poet, naturalist, and philosopher, Journals, July 14, 1852

Allow Their Children

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.

-- Bill Cosby (1937-), American actor, comedian, television producer and activist

The Future

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

-- Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958), American inventor, founder of Delco

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