Quote of the Day:
May 24, 2013
“The complicity on Wall Street is sickness! If you think the big firms are being honest well, sweetheart, go think something else!”
-Sandy Lewis, Columnist, The New York Times, 9/15/2012
Our daily quotes are provided by American University's Simpson Fellows who continue the mission of Reverend James B. Simpson's Contemporary Quotations: The Most Notable Quotes From 1950 to the Present
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- Arts & Letters Daily
- Christopher Buckley at The Daily Beast
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- Ezra Klein at the Washington Post
- Firedoglake
- First Read
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- Frank Rich at New York Magazine
- Frum Forum
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- Maureen Dowd at The New York Times
- National Review
- National Review's The Corner
- Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal
- Political Wire
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- Roll Call
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- The Daily Beast
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- The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan
- The Daily Show
- The Economist
- The Hill
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- The Nation
- The New Republic
- The Weekly Standard
- Wonkette
April 2011
April 1, 2011
“Republicans believe [that] government is the problem; Democrats believe [that] government has a communications problem.”
- Mark Mellman, Democratic pollster, National Journal, Mar. 26, 2011
April 2, 2011
“We have for too long, as a Congress, been too passive when it comes to sending our young men and women to war.”
- Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), on Congressional acquiescence to presidential desire for war, Politico, Mar. 22, 2011
April 3, 2011
“The legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves.”
- Columnist David Brooks, The New York Times, Mar. 22, 2011
April 4, 2011
“Like the rain, the budget cuts were supposed to fall on all alike. But somehow men seem to be ending up with more than their share of umbrellas, and women are getting soaked.”
- Katha Pollitt, The Nation, March 30, 2011
April 5, 2011
“Sometimes the government needs to step in to save capitalism from its worst Darwinian excesses.”
– Dick Polman, National Political Columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 3, 2011
April 6, 2011
“If we’re going to throw federal employees, including our staffs, out on the street, we should be right there with them. In the event of a shutdown, members should be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like everyone else.”
– Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), during a floor speech for the introduction of the Government Shutdown Fairness Act, Feb. 18, 2011
April 7, 2011
“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
– Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, on the need for candidates to give a long-winded explanation to policy positions, National Journal, March 5, 2011
April 8, 2011
“I hope we can solve the problem because, frankly, I think people are looking for a little adult interaction.”
– Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), on the looming government shutdown, CNN’s State of the Union, April 3, 2011
April 9, 2011
“After all, you can lose a lot of weight by cutting off your arms and legs. But no doctor would recommend it.”
- Sen. Harry Reid, majority leader, on the dangers of counterproductive budget cuts, New York Times, Feb. 10, 2011
April 10, 2011
“Government is a terrible servant and a dreadful master.”
- GOP Insider, National Journal, March 26, 2011
April 11, 2011
“On the one hand this is the single largest year-to-year cut in the federal budget. Frankly, in the history of America in absolute terms, and in inflation adjusted terms, it’s the biggest since World War II. Probably for that we all deserve medals, the entire Congress. Relative to the size of the problem, it’s not even a rounding error. In that case we probably all deserve to be tarred and feathered.”
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), on CNN’s State of the Union, Apr. 10, 2011
April 12, 2011
“War and moralism are uneasy bedfellows, and ‘low risk’ conflicts often turn out to be anything but.”
- Columnist Ross Douthat, The New York Times, Mar. 21, 2011
April 13, 2011
“In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.”
- Christiane Amanpour, keynote speech at the Edward R. Murrow Awards Ceremony, Sept. 13, 2000
April 14, 2011
“The world is a better place when America is willing to lead.”
- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid on Libya, Mar. 30, 2011
April 15, 2011
“The problem facing our system is that the minority has both the electoral incentive to see the majority fail and, using the Senate’s rules, the power to make it fail.”
- Columnist Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, Jan. 31, 2011
April 16, 2011
“It is a huge mistake for people to confuse fame with electability or seriousness of candidacy. If fame was all it took, Simon Cowell could pick presidents and not just rock stars.”
- Republican strategist Alex Vogel, The Fix blog, washingtonpost.com, Apr. 7, 2011
April 17, 2011
“The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or Church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.”
- Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, speaking at the University of Notre Dame, Sept. 19, 1984
April 18, 2011
“For all this talk about preserving Medicare, preserving Medicare as it currently is means that you are consigning it to history.”
– Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), on entitlement reform, The New York Times, Apr. 15, 2011
April 19, 2011
“Culture is everything in this country. Once you get down to the political level, you’ve already lost the battle.”
- Conservative media magnate Andrew Breitbart, GQ, April 2011 Issue
April 20, 2011
“We have too many people worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation.”
- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), The New York Times, Apr. 16, 2011
April 21, 2011
“Too much of our political debate…has become a race to the bottom. An exchange of insults and slanders more appropriate to reality television than a legislature.”
– Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on demanding serious leadership, opinion blog post on Unionleader.com, April 10, 2011, as reported in The Hill, April 15, 2011
April 22, 2011
“It’s great to be in a room full of young people…The average age of the Senate, I think, is death.”
– Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), in a speech to National Arts Advocacy Day lobbyists, April 5, 2011
April 23, 2011
“I just miss – I miss being anonymous. I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can’t take a walk.”
– President Barack Obama, speaking at the White House with a group of editors and publishers of Hearst Magazines, as reported by Politico44, April 11, 2011
April 24, 2011
“We welcome, in a certain sense, their attempt to repeal it because it gives us a second change to make a first impression.”
- Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), on the Republican attempt to repeal healthcare, Meet the Press, Jan. 16, 2011
April 25, 2011
“In the 21st century where choices and consequences come at us so much faster than ever before, the price of Senate inaction isn’t just that we will stand still; it isn’t just that America will fall behind; it’s that we will stay behind as we cede the best possibilities of this young century to others who are more disciplined.”
- Sen. John Kerry, in a speech at the Center for American Progress, Jan. 11, 2011
April 26, 2011
“Every few years, Republicans try to reform the welfare delivery systems to make them more market-like. Every few years, voters, even Republican voters, reject this.”
- Columnist David Brooks, The New York Times, Apr. 15, 2011
April 27, 2011
“We have big hearts but short attention spans.”
– Bill Keller, on the American missionary impulse, executive editor of The New York Times, in the New York Times Magazine, Apr. 17, 2011
April 28, 2011
“If democracy succeeds in Egypt, other countries will follow. Should the democratic experiment in Egypt be hijacked by the military or anti-democratic Islamist groups, the revolution will fail elsewhere.”
- Journalist David Ignatius, Foreign Policy, Apr. 22, 2011
April 29, 2011
“Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.”
- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech to the European Parliament outlining the priorities of the British Presidency, June 23, 2005.
April 30, 2011
“Strategy depends on the ability to look deeper and further than the day-to-day.”
- Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Washington Post, Mar. 20, 2011