"Birds fly, tortoises crawl and politicians lie, particularly when they feel cornered. That's the natural order of things." - Gregory Rodriguez in: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 29, 2008
"I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots." - Thomas L. Friedman in: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2008
"[The British] sat down with thugs throughout their history, including us, I suspect." - Gen. David Petraeus, quoted from: Slate Magazine
"If you stand at El Paso, you are much closer to Los Angeles than you are to the other side of Texas. If you stand at the eastern side of Texas, you are much closer to Tampa than you are to El Paso. If you stand in the Panhandle, you are closer to Bismarck, North Dakota, than you are to Brownsville. And always remember, if you stand on the bridge in Brownsville, you are 801 miles to the edge of the Panhandle, but only 475 miles to Mexico City and 690 to Yucatan." - James Michener,
Texas (London, 1985), p. 963
"Sarah Palin is the Katyusha rocket of GOP America." - quoted from: The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 9, 2008
"One of the most immediate differences over the current incumbent is likely to be in the improved quality of presidential speeches." - quoted from: Guardian - The Wrap
"I've been sleeping like a baby, sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours, wake up and cry.'' - John McCain on the Jay Leno Show, quoted from: The Chicago Tribune: The Swamp
"[...] a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba [...] - The Economist about John McCains decision to choose Sarah Palin as a running mate.
"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal, quoted from: The Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2008
"Louisiana voters don't want good government, they want good entertainment." - Earl Long, quoted from: Slate Magazine, December 14, 2008
"Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won't do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission." - quoted from: Slate Magazine, January 13, 2009
"In just the first few weeks, I've had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my BlackBerry." - Barack Obama, quoted from: The Swamp
“Richard C. Holbrooke is the diplomatic equivalent of a hydrogen bomb” - Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state and a friend, quoted from: The New York Times
"President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class." - Dana Milbank in an analysis of President Obama's first speech to Congress, quoted from: The Washington Post, Wednesday, February 25, 2009
"It's bad enough that Americans are paralyzed by economic jitters. Now the president has to deal with lawmakers paralyzed by Twitter." - Dana Milbank on Members of Congress twittering and texting away during President Obama's first speech to Congress, quoted from: The Washington Post, Wednesday, February 25, 2009
"Let’s face it: The only bracing symbol of American strength right now is the image of Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps." - Maureen Dowd in The New York Times
"Upon arrival at Kimpo and Kimahie airport, please wear your clothes." - Instructions on a Korean flight - quoted from: Charlie Croker, Lost in Translation (London, 2007), p. 14
"[...] in recent years pirates have joined ninjas, mafiosos, drug dealers and even serial killers as pop-culture heroes. If we can make cannibals and psychopaths -- albeit fictional ones -- like Hannibal Lecter and Showtime's 'Dexter' into sympathetic figures, it's no wonder we can take a profession historically associated with murder, rape, pillaging and torture and turn it into a Disney franchise." - quoted from: The Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2009
"Europe is an Asian peninsula." - Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, transl. Richard Mayne (London, 1995) p. 304, quoted from: Henry Hitchens, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English (London, 2009), p. 54
"Texas, where virtually all the schools teach abstinence and abstinence alone, is a teen pregnancy disaster zone." - Gail Collins in: The New York Times, Mai 6, 2009
"[...] if you could convert (with photovoltaic cells) 20% of the Sun's energy into electricity you would need 5% of the world's deserts. This is not much land. So the opportunity is enormous." - US Energy Secretary Prof. Steven Chu, quoted from: BBC online News, May 22, 2009
"[…] everything he [Dick Cheney] says is a lie, including the ands and the thes." - Richard Cohen in: The Washington Post, May 12, 2009
"The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It’s based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that in rendering decisions, disembodied, objective judges are able to put aside emotion and unruly passion and issue opinions on the basis of pure reason." - Op-Ed columnist David Brooks in: The New York Times, May 28, 2009
"[Slang is] a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work." - Carl Sandburg, quoted from: A Word A Day @ Wordsmith
"Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too." - OP-ED columnist Gail Collins in: The New York Times
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