This ‘bearer of glad tidings’ died as he lived and taught—not to ’save mankind,’ but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it…. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil…. Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not to lay blames…. On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him….”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“A new poll shows that Minnesotans disapprove of Governor Tim Pawlenty (who scores a 42/52 job approval rating) and disapprove of their legislature by an even wider margin (25/66.) Must be because they’re rejecting Pawlenty’s big government health care plan.”
– Jonathan Chait

“We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce but nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher’s stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, ‘in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread.’”
–Thomas Jefferson

“If only the media had as much contempt for lying, thieving, corrupt politicians as they do for sports stars who use steroids.”
– Radley Balko

“I would like to live in a country where if a teenage American Muslim reads on a message board somewhere that the United States is a racist country hell-bent on persecuting Islam that he thinks ‘no it isn’t’ not ‘that’s why I got singled out for strip searches when we went on vacation last winter.’ Nor do I want the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to come under political pressure at home to divest from US firms because Emirati citizens who visit the US are being treated unfairly. Right now if a talented Bangladeshi scientist is weighing offers between an American and a European university, I can honestly tell him he’ll find the US a more welcoming place—that’s a strength we have as a society and as a country, and not something we should be eager to give up.”
– Matthew Yglesias

“One of the things that I always find amusing about political commentary on legislative processes is that people often think that because it is the first time that they have heard of something, that it must be a new and nefarious procedure cooked up recently, when in fact these things typically are long-standing processes that people normally ignore.”
– Steven Taylor

“Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.”
– Bruce Schneier

“In Sarah Palin we get the entire package – important news and silly news wrapped up into one great big ratings phenomenon. We get politics, since she is at least ostensibly a political figure. We get world events, because she says funny things about Russia. We get crises because, for all intents and purposes, the threat of her taking national office is a crisis in and of itself, and the media loves to hang that over our head.”
– E.D. Kain

(The rest of the article, which describes Sarah Palin’s symbiotic nature of modern media and celebrity, is well worth your time. As is pretty much everything E.D. Kain writes.)

“If you had told me 10 years ago that Iron Man would be the Marvel film franchise I would be most excited about, I’d have laughed you out of the room.”
– Shane Wilhelmsen

Watch the trailer for Iron Man 2.

“You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. ‘Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years were real fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few tunes.”
– Bill Hicks