Best quotes of 2006

Here are a few collections of quotes from 2006, with a sample from each:

Worst quotes from The New York Times

"The warnings of global warming that led former President George Bush to mock Mr. Gore as 'Ozone Man' in 1992 hardly seem far-fetched in these days of melting ice caps and toasty winters. Mr. Gore's tough condemnation of the war in Iraq, once derided by the White House as evidence of Mr. Gore's extremism, seems positively mainstream today." -- Chief political reporter Adam Nagourney, May 28.

And...

"The pattern has recurred time and again for several years: Palestinians fire rockets from northern Gaza that cause damage or casualties only occasionally, yet prompt a tough Israeli response, like the offensive now under way." -- Israel-based reporter Greg Myre, July 9.

Media Research Center

A runner-up for Quote of the Year:

"I don’t support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse....I’m not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea."

-- Los Angeles Times columnist and former Time staff writer Joel Stein in a January 24 column

Australia's The Daily Telegraph

"I would love to kill George Bush."

-- Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams, speaking to Brisbane schoolchildren

Sydney Morning Herald

April Fool's Day ignites a month of overstatement. Alan Ramsey argues at great length that, under Howard, there are "parallels with Hitler's Germany". How strange, then, that this columnist remains a free man.

Mark Steyn

I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve switched on the TV and seen crazy guys jumping up and down in the street torching the Stars and Stripes and yelling “Death to the Great Satan!” But I never thought I’d switch on the TV and see the excitable young lads jumping up and down in Jakarta, Lahore, Aden, Hebron, etc, etc, torching the flag of Denmark.

Denmark! Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza..? Say what you like about the Islamic world but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offence or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they’d have.

The Chicago Sun-Times, February 5th

Human Events: Journalistic Hysteria

The good news late in the year was that a messiah cometh. Time's Joe Klein wrote on Oct. 23 that Barack Obama "seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow -- a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy. He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions -- and answer all the impossible questions -- plaguing American public life."

Media Research Center

“You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You’re looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat’s not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today... And the question you can sense on everyone’s mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?… Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they’re even naming babies after him.”

– Co-anchor Terry Moran profiling Obama on ABC’s “Nightline,” November 6.

[Was Terry Moran masterbating when he said that? --Don]