"We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It's possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house."
- Spokesman for NorthWest commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill -
"Good fences make good neighbors."
- Robert Frost -
"You get cast in a show; you rehearse for five weeks; you get really close to your fellow company members; you open the show; and then wham! Sixteen years later the producer decides to close it."
- Actor Nick Wyman on the end of Broadway's Les Miz -
"The trick to getting what you want in life, my dear, is not wanting it until after you get it."
- Katherine Hepburn -
"What didn't the president know -- and why didn't he know it? And why does he know less and less every day? After all, it's becoming clearer by the day that just about everyone else involved knew that the president was using a bogus charge to alarm the nation about Saddam's nuclear threat. Whatever the opposite of 'top secret' is, this was it."
- Arianna Huffington -
"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
- Bertrand Russell -
"It's easy to have a complicated idea. It's very, very hard to have a simple idea."
- Carver Mead -
"Only when the writer relinquishes the text, does the text come into existence. At that point, the existence of the text is a silent existence, silent until the moment in which a reader reads it. Only when the able eye makes contact with the markings on the tablet, does the text come to active life. All writing depends on the generosity of the reader."
- Alberto Manguel, novelist, anthologist, editor, and translator -
"One day, this Iraq War will be thought of as the Intellectuals' War. That is, it was a war conceived of by people who possessed more books than common sense, let alone actual military experience. Disregarding prudence, precedent and honesty, they went off - or, more precisely, sent others off - tilting at windmills in Iraq, chasing after illusions of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and false hope about Iraqi enthusiasm for Americanism, and hoping that reality would somehow catch up with their theory. The problem, of course, is that wars are more about bloodletting than book learning."
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I had lost exactly two weeks."
- Joe E. Lewis -
"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
- White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explaining why the administration waited until after Labor Day to start promoting its war on Iraq to the general public -
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice went on Sunday TV talk shows to argue that Bush's statements about uranium were technically accurate because he simply repeated what the British government had said publicly about an Iraqi build-up two decades ago. Oh, please. This is like Bill Clinton's question about the definition of 'is' during Monicagate -- except this brewing scandal isn't about some White House affair with an intern. Indeed, the Bush administration's assertions leading up to the war carry the blood, sweat and tears of U.S. military men and women."
"Only two things are certain; the universe and man's stupidity; and I'm not so sure of the universe."
- Albert Einstein -
"The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship. Usually, corrupt governments allow their citizens lots of wonderful rights on paper, while carrying out their jackbooted oppression covertly. From snatch and grab operations to warrantless searches, Patriot Act 2 is an Adolf Hitler wish list."
"This budget defies common sense. Veterans' pensions and disability compensation are parts of the costs of defending freedom. Our nation cannot, in good conscience, commit men and women to battle, and reduce the meager, yet well-deserved, compensation for those who are wounded. Of all the citizens who benefit from mandatory federal funding, none are worthier than those who are disabled today because they risked all of their tomorrows fighting for freedom."
"In the first appendix to this book [
The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn], Ravitch has compiled an exhaustive list of the words, usages, stereotypes, and topics that have been banned by textbook publishers. Forbidden words? Forefathers. Victim. Snowman. Warrior. Stereotypes to shun? 'Boys expressing anger.' 'Caucasians living in affluent suburbs.' Topics for exclusion? Junk bonds. Junk food. Rap music. Yachting. The best way to summarize this appendix is to say that it includes most of the contents of the real world, which children experience every day in their own lives and in the media."
