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

Elegance

Two tires held in place by ribbons in the middle, thimbles on the edge.
Rubber with no tread, little weight.
Folded in a pocket with room left over.
A half inch touching earth when not.

One frame of angles connected by braze or fiber.
Smooth and shimmering paint attract the eye.
Like a beautiful woman,
or perfect sunset.

Bar with swooping curls at the ends.
Curls that drop from a straight top
and resting place for levers.
All wrapped in tape to caress the hand.

Cranks and cogs transmit force to a whirring chain.
A chain that runs to a tangle of springs and levers.
telling the machine how fast to go,
how good the beast astride.

A thin piece of leather atop a fragile post.
Material slides over the smooth surface a hundred
beats per minute driving the machine on.
Creating a vision of elegance.

All topped by an amalgam of muscle and bone.
Covered with colors of slick and stretchy fabric,
grasping the bars, sitting on the saddle,
cranking the rings that drive the chain and turn the wheels.

The whole is elegant as it slips through the wind,
along tracks, up hills and down.
Elegant, too, when still.
Waiting to be let loose upon the world.

This piece of elegant artistry that is a bicycle.

-- David Kannas, "Elegance", West Seattle Herald, 30 March 2009

Unaware

A ton of people pass me literally unaware of their surroundings.

-- Matthew Downing, Oklahoma City police sergeant, on erratic behavior by drivers talking on their phones or texting, New York Times, 19 July 2009

Sacrifices

It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.

-- Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891), novelist

Experience

Most people do not accumulate a body of experience. Most people go through life undergoing a series of happenings, which pass through their systems undigested. Happenings become experiences when they are digested, when they are reflected on, related to general patterns, and synthesized.

-- Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (p. 68)

Mobile Phone

I'm going to kick his arse. The millions that have been spent on this search, the man hours and woman hours that have gone into it ... all because he goes out on a walk without his mobile phone. The only teenager in the world who goes on a 10-mile hike and leaves his mobile phone behind.

-- Richard Cass, father of British teenager Jamie Neale, 19, who was lost for 12 days while hiking in Australia's Blue Mountains, 15 July 2009

Read The Bills

If every member pledged to not vote for it (the health care bill) if they hadn't read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes.

-- Senator Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader, July 2009