This year [2004], more people will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack. More adults will file for bankruptcy than will be diagnosed with cancer. More people will file for bankruptcy than will graduate from college. And, in an era when traditionalists decry the demise of the institution of marriage, Americans will file more petitions for bankruptcy than for divorce.
                                                               —Elizabeth Warren.

I sometimes think that a certain kind of right-wing belief system is propped up on syntactical delusion: conspiracy theories rest on beliefs and associations that don't make sense politically but can be swallowed by those who can't make sense grammatically.
                                                             —Rebecca Solnit.

To say 'I ate a doughnut in Los Angeles' is a different thing altogether from saying 'I ate a doughnut.' The invocation of LA throws that doughnut on a stage where it casts a long shadow of depravity or opportunity.
                                                                 —Jenny Price.

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilisation, into a regiment of ghosts - obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
                               —Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man.

Art museums are our traditional palaces of rational entertainment, places for people to discover something they didn't already know, or didn't know they needed to know. They are sacred spaces, too, no matter how unfashionable that may sound: we expect to have in them encounters with authentic objects in a context that is respectful of our intelligence.
                                                          —Michael Kimmelman.

The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to us by a wise God.
                                                                        —Phyllis Schlafly.

When you retire into inactive life, you may, as a subject of consolation for your declining years, reflect that precisely according to the extent of your past operations, your life has been successful in retarding the arts, tarnishing the virtues, and confusing the manners of your country.
                                                                    —Ruskin.

The ultimate test of good writing: it is more painful to stop reading than it is to keep going.
                                                              —Louis Menand.