* “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”–Donald Trump.
* “One cannot force one’s lifestyle on the future generations. The problem is that we want two generations after us to live the way we like them to.”–Iran President Hassan Rouhani.
* “Nationalism is a powerful current in Iranian life, and Mr. Trump is offering Ayatollah Khamenei the gift of a credible straw man–with alacrity, it seems,”–Laura Secor, author of “Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran.”
* “We should root for both the Iranian and Saudi youth movements to bury 1979. It would be a gift for Muslims the world over–and for the world at large, which has spent trillions of dollars countering the furies fueled by that pivotal year.”–Thomas Friedman, New York Times.
* As fearful as we are of thousands of Americans going down to Cuba and recreating the mass tourism model that destroyed much of the Caribbean, tourism has to be part of the solution.”–American marine biologist and Ocean Doctor founder David E. Guggenheim.
* “This is a system that is hackable and prone to human and technical error.”–Bruce G. Blair, nuclear security expert and research scholar at Princeton University, on America’s Emergency Notification System.
* “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it. They just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our military.”–Donald Trump.
* “While unqualified people are marching in, qualified people are fleeing. … Just one year of Donald Trump has moved us a long way toward a government of the worst and dumbest. It’s a good thing the man at the top is, like, smart.”–Paul Krugman, New York Times.
* “The fact is that Americans already have all the data they need to judge Trump’s fitness. After all, do you really need a physicist to explain what will happen to you if you walk in front of a speeding train?”–Richard Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College.
* “Oprah: Sounder on economics than Bernie Sanders, understands Middle America better than Elizabeth Warren, less touchy-feely than Joe Biden, more pleasant than Andrew Cuomo, more charismatic than John Hickenlooper.”–Conservative commentator Bill Kristol.
* “We are in the age of celebrity and the next one will and can be anything–Nobel laureate, movie star, professional wrestler, talk-show host, charismatic corporate executive.”–Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal.
* “Pay attention to undecided voters. Undecideds almost always break toward the challenger. It happened in 2016 to Trump. In midterms, they break away from the party holding the White House.”–Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report.
* “Whether Jeff Sessions likes cannabis is not the question. The people of California voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana for recreational use.”–Kevin de Leon, the California State Senate leader.
* “Dear (Interior) Secretary Zinke: California, like Florida, has hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline and a governor who wants to keep it that way. Or is that not enough for a blue state?”–California Rep. Adam Schiff.
* “Everybody who’s been fighting drilling for years is seeing Rick Scott in the period of a week change his tune on drilling and then emerge as the champion in a choreographed press conference.”–Frank Jackalone, the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter director.
* “Telemarketers with a cool title.”–Former Florida Congressman Patrick Murphy, on what it felt like to have to be consumed by fund-raising while a member of Congress.
* “I’m not left; I’m not right. I’m forward.”–Philip Levine, Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former mayor of Miami Beach.
* “Having the president governing from our county in an area bordered by water on each side in a facility never built to offer the level of protection the president requires is a challenge.”–Palm Beach County Commissioner David Kerner.
* “We did in six weeks what we did last year in three months. Imagine what we could have done in three months.”–Jodi Ray, director of Florida Covering Kids & Families at the University of South Florida. Florida led all states with 1.75 million people signing up for the Affordable Care Act during the (Nov.1-Dec.15) open enrollment period.
* “So far, there’s no indication that this growth is slowing down any time soon. This record is significant and underscores the importance of Tampa International Airport’s master-planned projects and the need to build now and build smart.”–Hillsborough County Aviation Authority Chairman Robert Watkins, on TIA’s record 2017 passenger count of nearly 20 million and how that reinforces the ongoing expansion projects.
* “Unless we are willing to ask the public to tax themselves significantly in order to make it happen, then realistically, light rail is really not going to happen.”–St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman.