The Gipper: “I have a special reason for wanting to solve this [economic] problem in a lasting way. I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he’d lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that’s a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.”

Non Compos Mentis: “I pray a lot. I believe in the power of prayer and I think it is urgent. … [Kavanaugh] is a danger to affordable health care, women’s right to choose, any stare decisis — Brown v. the Board of Education, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protection and the rest. So, this is as serious as it gets.” —House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Race bait: “Does anybody else hear that dog whistle? It’s kind of a bullhorn. [Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee Ron Desantis] actually said ‘monkey this up.’ Sadly, it’s not even surprising anymore when one of President Trump’s supporters says something racially insensitive.” —CNN’s Don Lemon

Misgivings: “I put several ideas on the table. The president [Barack Obama] was not persuaded by my argument. I believed that we had several options we could have done at very low risk to be able to make it clear to [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad that when we had a cease fire and when he said he was going to live by it he had to live by it. And I thought we should have done that. … We paid a price for the way it played out without the red line being enforced by the bombing.” —John Kerry

Broken clock: “We’re the bottom of the barrel. We’re court jesters. Nothing we’re doing is noble. … You should never look at a comedian to be your philosopher.” —"comedian" Michelle Wolf

And last… “The contrast between the outpouring of love for McCain in his last days and the astonishing vitriol directed at him in 2000 and 2008 demonstrates once again how disingenuous, low, and cheap American politics were well before Trump came on the scene.” —David French