Recently in Quotable Category

President John F. Kennedy on the separation of church and state.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

I concur.

This evening, on the phone with Katie:

“He knows all these bands that you wouldn’t know, but that most people do.”

George Orwell on the public discourse of important issues:

Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) on the president’s immigration reform plan from last January.

… and if they send the same pig with lipstick back to Congress next January, it will suffer the same fate.

Maybe it’s because of some cliché sentimentality borne of my US roots. It could stem from some actual patriotic fervor, I don’t know. But this is one of my favorite apothegms.

Vox populi, vox dei. (The voice of the people is the voice of God.)

Tucker Carlson, Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher:

“No matter how you feel about Bush, watching him speak is difficult. Itç—´ like watching a drunk man cross an icy street…”

Speaking at the signing of a $417 billion defense spending bill, the President said:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bushç—´ misstatement å± ust shows even the most straightforward and plain-spoken people misspeak.”

[via MSNBC]

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. —H.L. Menken

From Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix:

Hermione to Ron: “Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have.”

From Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix:

“And that complete cow Pansy Parkinson”, said Hermione viciously. “How she got to be a prefect when she’s thicker than a concussed troll…”