* “So what’s your plan? … Totally go to war?”–Secretary of State John Kerry to Republican lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
* “Supporting this (Iran nuclear) deal doesn’t make you Neville Chamberlain; opposing it doesn’t make you Dr. Strangelove. Both sides have legitimate arguments.”–Thomas Friedman, New York Times.
* “The Iranian people want to be South Korea, not North Korea.”–Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment.
* “Greece’s debt is so great that everyone understands–it will not pay.”–Andris Berzins, president of Latvia.
* “Africa is on the move.”–President Barack Obama.
* “If we criticize the United States, it’s because we love the States. But we love a certain representation of the States. We love Lincoln. We love Kennedy. We love Roosevelt and the New Deal. We love the Founding Fathers. We love the creativity. We don’t like the rifle association.”–Romain Nadal, French Foreign Ministry spokesman.
* “The xenophobes have always been with us, sometimes in power, usually not. It’s the mother of all ironies that a nation where all but about 2 percent (the Native Americans) of the population can trace its lineage to some distant land is now going through another of its anti-immigrant moments.”–Timothy Egan, New York Times.
* “Today’s immigrants aren’t coming here to breathe free, they are coming to live for free.”–Conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter.
* “Run for president. But don’t be the world’s biggest jackass.”–Sen. Lindsey Graham to Donald Trump.
* “He’s (Donald Trump) saying what (some) people really think but don’t express because their inhibitory neurons are functioning. Inhibition, far from the curse of nudists and comedians, is God’s suggestion that we think first, speak later.”–Kathleen Parker, Washington Post.
* “You wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”–J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich, Tallahassee lobbyist and former Jeb Bush political strategist, on the downside of top-tier GOP candidates responding too aggressively to Donald Trump.
* “Winning the nomination isn’t about winning every news cycle against a Trump. It’s about winning 30,000 votes in Iowa and 50,000 votes in New Hampshire.”–Stuart Stevens, GOP strategist and Chris Christie campaign adviser.
* “It’s the ’60s reformist impulse without countercultural baggage. It’s the kind of square that needed time to become hip. It’s a moralistic politics that takes seriously the democratic proposition that elected officials must deliver results. The fact that he wins elections says there’s an alternative to Clinton-style politics.”–Todd Gitlin, author and Columbia University professor of journalism and sociology, on the attraction of Bernie Sanders’ “municipal socialism.”
* “Odds are good that by Election Day the economy will be a full employment, growing strongly. The economic winds will be at the back of incumbents.”–Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.
* “The Cuban tourism industry earns over $2 billion a year. Are they going to put that at risk to drill for oil that has yet to be found?”–Jorge Pinon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas.
* “Positive change in Cuba will take time. But it will come not as a result of stubborn nostalgia by a vociferous few for the Batista years, but by visiting Cuba, listening to the Cuban people, and engaging with them.”–Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
* “It’s hard to understand, with jet fuel prices dropping by 40 percent since last year, why ticket prices haven’t followed.”–Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
* “In the storm I release control, God and his Universe will sail me where he wants me to be, one love.”–Recent Hulk Hogan tweet.
* “We love it when people love marine animals, but we can’t love them to death. We need to keep our distance and continue to enjoy their beauty.”–Rebecca Lent, executive director of the Marine Mammal Commission.
* “The big change coming up in the South, to me, is that in the next couple of decades there will be a new generation coming of age and taking charge, and the region will be more moderate for that reason alone.”–Jack Bass, author of “The Transformation of Southern Politics.”
* “This ($850.2 million 2016) budget is not going to include a lot of glamour, but it gets the job done.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn, on the proposed budget that is less than this year’s $876 million budget.
* “It’s a bittersweet day.”–Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, in announcing the departure of CEO Tod Leiweke, who will become chief operating officer of the NFL.
* “The local real estate market has returned to normal levels, with annual appreciation rates between 5 and 10 percent. This mirrors the trend we are seeing nationally, which is a solid recovery from the housing bubble and recession of prior years.”–Tim Wilmath, director of valuation for the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s Office.
* “We’re very vested in that project and we want it to succeed. We are not getting a return on our dollars like we do in other places. We’re holding their hands.”–Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman on the relationship between the county and MOSI.
* “This idea of seasonality is something that’s going by the wayside for us.”–David Downing, CEO of Visit St. Pete/Clearwater.