* “The Israeli lobby is regarded as right up there with the National Rifle Association as a crowd that rewards its friends and punishes its enemies, with this exception: Far more congressmen and senators are willing to stand up to the NRA than to defy AIPAC.”–Patrick J. Buchanan, Creators Syndicate.
* “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good.”–Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
* “Depending on what room you’re in here, sometimes it’s easier coming out gay to Republicans than it is coming out Republican to gays.”–Kevin L. James, a gay Republican running for mayor of Los Angeles.
* “President George W. Bush’s steep tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and his multitrillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan emptied the piggy bank while exacerbating the great divide. His party’s newfound commitment to fiscal discipline–in the form of insisting on low taxes for the rich while slashing services for the poor–is the height of hypocrisy.”–Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
* “Karl Rove is trying to rebrand himself so people will forget all the losses in 2012. But he sounds like big-daddy government: ‘I know what’s best, you need to listen to us and do what we say.’ It is the antithesis of what the GOP stands for. Primary voters want to pick their candidates.”–Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots.
* “It’s like Yugoslavia, and Tito just died.”–Physician and former hospital executive Kent Bottles on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on business models.
* “I like Tim personally. But he was better at putting out the fire than preventing the next one.”–Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.
* “In the end, the strongest economic argument for an aggressive response to climate change is not the much trumpeted windfall of green jobs. It’s the fact that the economy won’t function very well in a world full of droughts, hurricanes and heat waves.”–David Leonhardt, New York Times.
* “Sally Jewell would be the first woman chosen to join Mr. Obama’s second-term cabinet, which is dominated by white males. But she also represents a different kind of diversity inside the Beltway: someone who can tell you which way the wind is blowing without having to fake it.”–Timothy Egan, New York Times, on President Obama’s nomination of Jewell as Interior Secretary.
* “Let’s give parents the ammunition they need to tell their kids that texting while driving isn’t only wrong and isn’t only dangerous but is illegal. … The Florida Legislature can help, because it’s at the state level where the greatest good can be done.”–Mike Jackson, chairman and CEO of AutoNation.
* “The reader has always been the most critical element. The idea is that quality journalism produces a quality reader who attracts quality advertising. That hasn’t changed.”–Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times.
* “In making changes to the voting sequence, we adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what Lincoln is. I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters.”–Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner.
* “Marco Rubio’s going to do whatever’s good for Marco Rubio.”–Raul Martinez, Democratic former mayor of Hialeah.
* “Charlie Crist may have a chance at beating the incumbent unless Scott is successful in buying votes this time with taxpayer money. He bought them last time using his own money.”–GOP fundraiser and adviser C.C. Dockery.
* “The real justice out of all of this will come when we see the party out of the money laundering business and Swiss bank account business for legislative leaders.”–Allen Cox, former GOP state party vice chairman, on Jim Greer’s guilty plea to grand theft and money laundering.
* “Brazil is one of our priority markets. We see a lot of opportunity there.”–Wade Elliot, senior marketing director for the Tampa Port Authority.
* “I sensed when we briefly reminisced about our work together … that I was saying good-bye.”–Bishop Robert Lynch, who leads the diocese of St. Petersburg, on his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican last May.
* “It is so cool to be ‘carny-in-chief,'”–Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam at the Florida State Fair.
* “This week (Wednesday) we have back-to-back groundbreakings at two large developments, the Classic Federal Courthouse and the Crescent Bayshore Condominiums. These projects are indicative of the interest and excitement surrounding our urban core.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn.