In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. -- Barack Obama

Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.
-- Bill Clinton

I think this country is on the edge of a rebellion. -- Newt Gingrich, illustrating the kind of talk that worries President Clinton

Same here: I'm clinging to my guns, my religion and my ammunition. We were intended to be a constitutional Republic. Yet, we have devolved into some kind of mad democracy. -- Rand Paul, Son of Ron & Senate candidate, at a tea party rally

I will probably never shoot a bear. -- Barack Obama, contrasting himself with Teddy Roosevelt

It’s okay, Counsel. The Constitution makes the same mistake. -- John Paul Stevens, after Chief Justice William Rehnquist sternly admonished a lawyer for calling Supreme Court Justices "Judges" during oral argument

I hate to break this to you but we have a tendency for mechanical failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models. The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.
-- email from Irving Miller, group VP for Toyota Sales, U.S.A. to another Toyota executive

Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues. If the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin. -- Barack Obama, responding to a question about Palin's criticism of the treaty

I could give a flying crap about the political process. We're an entertainment company. -- Glenn Beck

I am ready today to declare that should I seek the office of US Senator from the great state of Louisiana that I will do so as a Republican. As someone who has worked extensively in both the club and film side of the Adult Entertainment Industry, I know from experience that a mere $1900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return.
-- Porn star Stormy Daniels

...this is someone watching thoughts go by at a certain distance and gluing them together willy-nilly -- for the first time. -- Linguist John McWhorter, on Sarah Palin's public speaking style

I think Michael Steele's problem isn't the race card, it's the credit card.
-- Robert Gibbs

I’m not filling out this [census] form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door.... We are becoming enslaved by the government. -- Erick Erickson of CNN

... AND evidently pederasty is a problem of long-standing in the Church. Some advice for Benedict XVI from St. Basil of Caesarea (330-379 C.E.):

The cleric or monk who molests youths or boys or is caught kissing or committing some turpitude, let him be whipped in public, deprived of his crown [tonsure] and, after having his head shaved, let his face be covered with spittle; and [let him be] bound in iron chains, condemned to six months in prison, reduced to eating rye bread once a day in the evening three times per week. After these six months living in a separate cell under the custody of a wise elder with great spiritual experience, let him be subjected to prayers, vigils and manual work, always under the guard of two spiritual brothers, without being allowed to have any relationship … with young people.

Obama's domestic program should be renamed, in the spirit of the Square Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Deal, the Great Frontier, and the Great Society ... the Big F***ing Deal. -- Ben Smith of Politico

When I was six, I wanted to be a fireman. -- Barack Obama

The Republican motto should be, to paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have is fear itself. -- Joe Sudbay

I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.
-- Jim Clyburn, on tea party protesters slinging racial epithets & spitting on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver

The modern GOP is more outraged about Democratic parliamentary tactics than about the fact that many Americans will die this year due to lack of health care -- and the MSM just follows right along. -- A Reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog

You have a healthcare plan for the healthy.
-- Chris Matthews to Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity

It is a flea-infected, tick-infested, parasite-infected, special interest-infected wet, smelly dog.
-- Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fl), on the health reform bill

This should not be passed by anyone unless they eat it.
-- Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Tex), on the health reform bill

The current legislation is not 'pro-abortion,' and there is no, repeat no, federal funding of abortion in the bill.
-- Editors, National Catholic Reporter

When I'm drafting right to life language, I don't call up the nuns. [I confer with] leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee.
-- Rep. Bart Stupak, on American nuns' support of healthcare legislation

I thought that proper attire would include a parachute.
-- Dennis Kucinich, on his Air Force 1 ride, alluding to his opposition to many of the President's proposals

Falling in love with you could really fuck up my plans for becoming President. -- John Edwards, to Rielle Hunter during their first tryst

Grayson praised Palin for having a hand large enough to fit Grayson's entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting. -- Alan Grayson campaign e-mail, on Sarah Palin's visit to Central Florida

I don't know why they'd feel uncomfortable, they made the decision. Look, the president disagreed, and polls show 80 percent of the country disagrees with that decision. The president would have said that in that room had they been sitting in that row or not been there at all.
-- Robert Gibbs, on Chief Justice Roberts' comments about the State of the Union address

Do you think John Roberts knows or cares how people get elected? I think we've had enough of them. I think what we need are people on that bench who have been legislators, people who are lawyers, people who are academics. You look at our Supreme Court and all these people, all they know is working with people in black robes. We have got to change that. -- Harry Reid

She's got to have tits. -- James Cameron, on casting criteria for the heroine of "Avatar"

It means that the bill will be pushed through the senate with 50 votes instead of the usual 60. -- Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, explaining reconciliation

Can I say that 20 million Americans unemployed, the fact that we're worrying about the status of the White House social secretary.... (moderator interrupts)
-- Paul Krugman, on "This Week with Whoever"

Even Tom Tancredo is right some of the time:
I don’t like him. He is not a very pleasant person. He is nasty, mean; the skin of an onion would look deep compared to his. He has a short fuse, he is almost peculiarly unstable. -- Tom Tancredo, on John McCain

This is going to come as quite a shock to people up here that I can write a book, much less read one.
-- George W. Bush, in Washington, D.C.

Tough shit! -- Jim Bunning, on the floor of the Senate, in response to Democratic colleagues who protested his hold on extension of jobless benefits, which will run out Sunday

I always expected that Wall Street and Main Street weren’t going to be on the same page. The same page? They’re not on the same universe. They really do believe they are entitled to $9 million.
-- "Pay Czar" Kenneth Feinberg

...the president and Congress have a constitutional obligation to establish an institutional framework that will keep future John Yoos under control.
-- Prof. Bruce Ackerman

My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes. -- Actor Andrea Fay Friedman, who has Down syndrome. Palin criticized Friedman's role in "Family Guy"

If you have it banged into your head from the cradle to adolescence that America is the chosen nation—a country built by a rugged and God-fearing band of Anglo-Saxon individualists armed with pikes and long guns—you are less likely to embrace other essential features of the American heritage, such as the church-state divide, mass immigration, and the essential role of the federal government in the country’s economic and political development. -- John Cassidy

Imagine a democracy where politicians representing only a tenth of the population can frustrate the will of the majority, where the legislature is divided up into absurdly gerrymandered seats, where money politics is rife, where bipartisanship has disappeared--and where nothing ever gets done. -- The Economist

Sir, I would say that 70 years ago you and I couldn’t serve in the same Navy, the same Air Force, the same Army because of the color of my skin and because of the social conditions of the day.... The U.S. military was always at the forefront of social change. We didn't wait for laws to change.
-- AF Chief Master Sgt. Darryl E. Robinson explaining to Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, why the troops are unconcerned about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Dick Cheney wants to be prosecuted. And prosecutors should give him what he wants. -- Scott Horton

If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.
-- Justice Antonin Scalia

Our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them and not lawyers to defend them. -- Scott Brown on civil trials for suspected terrorists.

... I don’t know whether the new senator from Massachusetts understands: When you get tried in a military tribunal, you get a lawyer too. -- Joe Biden

That's not advise and consent. That's delay and obstruct.
-- Barack Obama, on Republican holds on nominees

At the end of it, as I was watching Senator Franken, I thought to myself: However this turns out, I’m good, I’m smart, and doggone it, people like me.
-- David Axelrod, re: a heated exchange he had with Al Franken

This is an odd constitutional moment indeed in America, in which corporations are treated like living persons by judges who aspire to be machines. -- Dahlia Lithwick

Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires ... they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our constitution was established.
-- Justice John Paul Stevens, in his Citizens United dissent

If you needed one example of what’s wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold up 70 qualified individuals to make government work better because he didn’t get his earmarks. -- Robert Gibbs, on Sen. Richard Shelby's hold on virtually all of President Obama's nominees

Surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith -- or, for that matter, my citizenship.
-- Barack Obama, at "The Family"- sponsored National Prayer Breakfast

When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. -- Headstone engraving for Leonard Matlovich, gay veteran

I have served with homosexuals since 1968.
-- Adm. Mike Mullen, in a get-over-it response to Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions

For when the going gets tough, tribesmen don't give much thought for their fellow tribesmen, nor clansmen for their fellow clansmen. But a battalion joined together by erotic love cannot be destroyed or broken: its members stand firm beside one another in times of danger, lovers and beloveds alike. -- Plutarch on gays in the military, in "The Sacred Band of Thebes," to be precise

In a normal legislative body, a 2-1 vote is a rout. In today's Senate, it's a squeaker. -- Ryan Grim

CBS said it had rejected an ad for a gay dating site for the 2010 Super Bowl, but that it would still air three hours of men in tight pants slapping each other on the ass. -- Andy Borowitz

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. -- Howard Zinn, 2004

When you look at his record - when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless; on behalf of a strong government or corporation against upholding Americans' individual rights. -- Sen. Barack Obama, January 26, 2006, on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. -- J. D. Salinger

Justice Alito breached protocol in a more serious way than Joe Wilson did. -- Glenn Greenwald

Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. -- Barack Obama

I don't know. -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on whether her vote for Bush in Bush v. Gore was the right decision

Is our economic policy going to be held hostage forever by the Wall Street threat that total collapse is going to happen if we don’t do what they want? -- Tom Harkin

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute talk with the average voter. -- Winston Churchill, attributed

I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in. -- Paul Krugman, in a post titled "He Wasn't the One We've Been Waiting For"

As long as I have served ... I've never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they've done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. No democracy has survived needing a supermajority. -- Joe Biden

If my approval rating were still 70% after a vigorous congressional session, I'd feel I hadn't been doing my duty. . . . You can't measure great transformation in the country by taking the country's pulse every week.
-- John F. Kennedy, 1963, when a reporter asked him why his poll numbers had dropped from 70% to 56% in a matter of months

We have created a society in which materialism overwhelms moral commitment, in which the rapid growth that we have achieved is not sustainable environmentally or socially, in which we do not act together to address our common needs. -- Joseph Stiglitz

Will the U.S Catch up to Mongolia? The majority of the world's countries have chosen to abolish the death penalty. We should follow this path.
-- Tsakhia Elbegdori, President of Mongolia, placing a moratorium on capital punishment

"You lie!" AP: Yale chooses the year's ten most memorable quotes.

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. -- Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles in "The Third Man" by Graham Greene

Insulation is sexy. -- Barack Obama

If we were to gauge the most important policy issue facing the U.S. today based on what's on TV, then we'd have to say it's the state of Tiger Woods' marriage.
-- Paul Krugman

Calling in generals and admirals to discuss troop strength is like me taking my youngest to McDonald’s to ask if he likes french fries. -- John Conyers, Jr., on the President's Afghanistan "deliberations"

We live in parallel universes -- the left on the Internet and the right on talk radio. -- Barney Frank

When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen. -- George Washington

That is why we fight -- in hopes of a day when we no longer need to. And that is why we gather at these solemn remembrances and reminders of war -- to recommit ourselves to the hard work of peace. -- Barack Obama

So we've decided that we're going to trade our Lieberman for their Lieberman. -- Barack Obama, after his meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu, referring to Odious Joe & right-wing Israeli minister Avigdor Lieberman

Iowa Is So Nowhere: I may go across Iowa, but it will be to get somewhere. -- Sen. John Thune, who says he's not running for President

...Now, another thing, the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight, so when you make 'em up give me an inch that I can let out there because they cut me. It's like ridin' a wire fence. -- Lyndon Johnson orders some new pants

Some people in Connecticut are upset that Joe [Lieberman] now opposes the public option. Namely, the 64% of people in Connecticut who support a public option. But remember, Joe's party is 'Connecticut for Lieberman,' not 'Lieberman for Connecticut.' Big difference. You see, Joe's a true independent. He's independent of political parties, and he's independent of his constituents. I say, stick to your principles, Joe. And as soon as you can, let us know what those are.
-- Stephen Colbert

You know what is worse than being sick and not having health insurance? Having to sit through the Lieberman filibuster that kept it from you. -- Jon Stewart

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D. -- Nicholas Kristof

Perhaps Joe the Plumber was not as unrepresentative of the party's intellectual center as I had hoped. -- former Oklahoma Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards

The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. -- Matt Taibbi, on Goldman Sachs

Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal. -- Matt Taibbi

A right-wing host...would turn to the conservative guest and ask, 'You think the war in Iraq is a stunning success. Please tell us why it's going so well.' Then s/he would introduce me and say, 'Now, I understand you're against fighting for freedom. Can you explain to our audience why that is?' -- David Corn, on being a liberal pundit on Fox

If the president has a BLT sandwich tomorrow, the Republicans are going to try to ban bacon.
-- Alan Grayson

1. The WSJ editorial page is wrong about everything.
2. If you think the WSJ editorial page is right about something, see rule #1. -- Paul Krugman

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
-- The Nobel Committee

Geithner...has been wrong about everything in his career.... He's a disaster.-- William Black, former regulator

The only thing they're going to be putting pressure on is the grass. -- Rep. Barney Frank, in urging gay rights advocates to pressure Congress rather than engaging in a futile march on Washington

In just an hour, the court's newest justice asked more questions than Justice Clarence Thomas has asked over the course of several years. -- Michael Doyle, McClatchy News

I don't think we should have nine clones up there.
-- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Ret., noting that all nine Supremes came up from Courts of Appeals

I went one year and I will never go again, because this sermon was outrageously anti-abortion.
-- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 2006, on why she doesn't attend the Roman Catholic Red Mass "honoring" lawyers

Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time.
-- Carrie Fisher

I was actually black before the election.
-- Barack Obama

I think Republicans should have the courage of their convictions and ban illegals from buying food.
– Jeffrey Toobin

I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have. What is she, the governor of Guam?
-- George W. Bush, on learning John McCain had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate

... You don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other guy. Obama doesn't have to be bipartisan. He just has to look more bipartisan than the Republicans. -- Ezra Klein

If he gets shot, it's too damned bad. -- Richard Nixon, on plans to remove Secret Service protection from Sen. Ted Kennedy, 1972

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. -- Edward Kennedy, 1980 Democratic convention

We are a country of more than 300 million Americans. Less than one percent wears the uniform.
-- Barack Obama

...there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this tepidity arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger.
-- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

When the elephant falls down, all the grass gets crushed as well. -- Ben Bernanke, on why he saved the bank

If you like the Post Office & the Department of Motor Vehicles, just wait till you see Medicare & Medicaid done by the government. -- Art Laffer, Reagan Administration economist (can't make this stuff up)

If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.
-- Paul Krugman on Wall Street bonuses

One reason the public shows so little support for the Obama healthcare plan is that there is, in fact, no Obama healthcare plan. -- Doyle McManus

We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns. It's the southerners. -- George Voinovich, Republican Senator from Ohio, on what's wrong with the GOP

There are few instances where the establishment media reveals more transparently what they are and what they do than when they demand that high-level Bush officials be endowed with immunity from the consequences of their crimes. -- Glenn Greenwald

Journalism-Free Zone. Coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to...and then move on. -- "Meet the Press Publicist" host David Gregory, to Mark Sanford's communications rep

Just another politician with a conservative mind & a liberal penis. -- Jon Stewart on Mark Sanford

You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. -- Warren Buffett

Ms Dowd must write her columns by formula: Two parts Hillary bashing; four parts Obama swooning; an equal measure of Bush evisceration and one part anecdotes of the famous, preferably anecdotes in which Ms Dowd plays a prominent role. -- Bev in Baltimore