Obama has been attacked repeatedly for not wearing a flag pin, with Republicans claiming that his patriotism is in question. It's all a bit silly.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

George Bernard Shaw

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.

William Penn

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.

Bell Hooks

My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying My mother, drunk or sober.

G. K. Chesterton

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Aristotle

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

Douglas Adams

He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.

Ursula K. LeGuin

I wanted to acquire an education, work extremely hard and never deviate from my goal, to make it.

Taylor Caldwell

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

Robert Reich

Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.

Woody Allen

Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it.

Andrea Dworkin

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

Tom Hopkins