"Ours is a rich and wonderful world, and there are stories everywhere. Nobody should ever try to second-guess history; the facts are fantastic enough."

Louis L’Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

"No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it."

Theodore Roosevelt (when he was New York City Police Commissioner)

"‘It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh,’ said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully, ‘for you must sleep, and eat and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.’”

L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

"A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it."

Alistair Cooke, quoted in The Write File Quarterly Issue #5, Summer 1995

In its annual report Freedom House had rated 81 of the world’s countries as providing a high degree of individual liberty. "It is not an accident that a majority of the citizens in 74 of those countries are Christians."

Paul Marshall, a Canadian political scientist and senior fellow with the Centre for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., quoted in British Columbia Report April 5, 1999

She dismisses an implausible claim as “like a clock that strikes 13. It throws into question all that has gone before it and all that follows.”

Arianna Huffington in National Review April 5, 1999

"In his 1906 Recollections of 13 Presidents, John Sergeant Wise, who had met Pierce, tells of the reaction of a lifelong acquaintance of Pierce’s when he learned the man had won the presidency. ‘Now Frank’s a good fellow, I admit,’ the elderly man said, ‘and I wish him well. He made a good state’s attorney, thar’s no doubt about that, and he made a far judge, thar’s no denying that, and nobody kain’t complain of him as a congressman. But when it comes to the whole Yewnited States, I dew say that in my jedgement Frank Pierce is agoin’ to spread durned thin.'"

Cynthia Crossen in James Taranto and Leonard Leo, eds., Presidential Leadership

"The most primitive idols, even those which have long been abandoned to the jungle and the sand-drift, are land-marks in the journey of the human soul: they represent a search for coherence in the confusions and fears of living. So this venerable House of Lords was not simply a constitutional relic of the great landed fortunes; it was also a fetish, it meant the ideally paternal responsibility of the noble few. And though this meaning was quite irrelevant to the twentieth century, yet those who tried to preserve it were not merely idle men or arrogant men. They saw the passing of certain values which at their best were very high and at their worst were very human; they did not realize that life consists in change, that nothing can stand still, that today’s shrines are only fit for tomorrow’s cattle."

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England