* “People can take everything from you. I lost my family, the chance to see my children grow up, the best years of my life. They can take everything except your mind and your heart. Those things I decided not to give away …”–Nelson Mandela.
* “The role of the Internet was overrated in Egypt and Tunisia. But it is underrated in the Gulf, where, in these more closed societies, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are providing vast uncontrolled spaces for men and women to talk to each other–and back at their leaders. … Saudi Arabia alone produces almost half of all tweets in the Arab world and is among the most Twitter- and YouTube-active nations in the world.”–Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times.
* “Technology and globalization are driving the good deals American consumers are getting this holiday season. But the same forces are keeping wages down, and are even on the verge of eliminating many of the low-wage retail and related service jobs many Americans now need to make ends meet.”–Robert Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.
* “When did fast-food restaurants become the fulcrum for social engineering?”–Dan Fitzpatrick, CEO of Quality Dining Inc., which owns hundreds of fast-food franchises, including Burger Kings.
* “A large percentage of Florida’s high school graduates are finding the transition into higher education increasingly difficult. In fact, too many students still leave high school unprepared to perform work at the college level. … Higher education should be to polish, enhance and enable graduates to live meaningful lives. Time spent remediating is time lost.”–Ed Moore, president and CEO of the Independent Colleges & Universities of Florida.
* “Despite our general preference for capitalism, our support for sports is essentially socialist, with local and state governments providing enormous support for professional teams.”–Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy, University of Notre Dame.
* “Not long ago, most intelligent television talk was not about politics. … Now most TV and radio talk is minute political analysis, while talk of culture has shriveled. This change is driven by people who, absent other attachments, have fallen upon partisanship to give them a sense of righteousness and belonging. This emotional addiction can lead to auto-hysteria.”–David Brooks, New York Times.
* “Some of us are fine with faith so long as it speaks in platitudinous generalities or offers a weapon to clobber gay people with, but scream bloody murder when it imposes specific demands on their personal conscience–or wallet.”–Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald.
* “We’re the Sunshine State, and we’re hardly doing any solar energy production. We should be the global leader in solar energy.”–Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist.
* “When a company is creating its own jobs, you don’t get a lot of (gubernatorial) podium moments.”–Tom O’Neal, executive director of GrowFl, UCF’s economic development institute.
* “The flights are exceeding expectations.”–TIA CEO Joe Lopano on early demand for Copa Airline’s nonstop flights between Tampa and Panama City, Panama, that begin this month.
* “The bottom line is it’s got to be a local effort. The state is ready and willing to step up and see what we can do. But it’s not going to be until everyone here comes together and says we do or don’t want (cruise ships).”–Richard Biter, Florida Department of Transportation’s assistant secretary for intermodal systems development, on how the Bay Area’s decides to address scenarios involving future mega cruise ships and a Sunshine Skyway Bridge that won’t have enough clearance.
* “If I had my way, we wouldn’t have any exceptions (for transfers). Our job is to educate students. We are not a farm team for colleges.”–Carol Kurdell, Hillsborough County School Board chairwoman.
* “We should be careful when applying a cost-benefit analysis when the safety of our children is involved; however, using a single incident involving a nine-year-old with a derringer to justify a $4.5 million annual expenditure for additional elementary schools SROs (school resource officers) is simply illogical.”–Mike Pheneger, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
* “There’s no way around it: We have an insatiable appetite for giving out proclamations.”–Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan.