Insight: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” —Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

Upright: “I’m proud to be a citizen of the United States of America, the land of the free and home of the brave. I will never take for granted the Freedoms that I have here.” —NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom

Hogwash: “Governors are rewarding [with unemployment benefits unvaxxed workers who were terminated]. … No person who was present at the founding of this country — Franklin, Washington, Madison, Hamilton — would endorse this idea of liberty. Liberty always involved the idea that you can do what you want, as long as you don’t impinge on someone else, and that is not what is happening here. People who stay unvaccinated are impinging on other people. They are propagating the virus. They are going to hospitals that are overloaded if they happen to get very sick. This is hardly individual liberty that does not impact the wellbeing of other people.” —bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel

Friendly fire: “I cannot believe this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration had dropped the ball on this. They focused a lot on vaccines, which is terrific. Vaccines are a really, really important part of this, but did not pay enough attention to testing. And I think it has been really costly in this holiday season.” —Dean of Brown University School of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha

A blind squirrel finds a nut: “If you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. And what we mean by that — if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s overcounting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.” —Dr. Anthony Fauci

The BIG Lie: “We’re ending 2021 with what one analyst described as the strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years.” —Joe Biden

The BIG Lie II: “Today, America is the only leading economy in the world where household incomes and the economy as a whole are stronger than they were before the pandemic, even accounting for price increases. The economy I inherited nearly a year ago wasn’t just in crisis; it wasn’t working for working people. And I told you that’s the reason I ran. It’s about time the middle class and working-class people got a shot.” —Joe Biden

Belly laugh of the week: “For many of us the most positive development of 2021 is 340 days without Donald J. Trump in the White House. There’s other good news: The economy is humming. … A scandal-free Biden administration.” —The Hill opinion contributor Albert Hunt

Anti-Semitic birds of a feather: “Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!” —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez legislative assistant Hussain Altamimi (“In September, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to cry after the House passed a bill to fund Israel’s Iron Dome, which protects the Jewish state from rocket attacks from the terrorist groups Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. … In July 2019 Ocasio-Cortez said that Palestinians ‘have no choice but to riot’ against Israel. … In July 2018 … Ocasio-Cortez called Israel the ‘occupiers’ of ‘Palestine.’” —The Daily Wire)

Theater of the absurd: “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos.” —Alexandria “Maskless in Florida” Ocasio-Cortez

Dezinformatsiya: “Japan has decided not to send senior officials to the Beijing Olympics in February — a move that will align it with the U.S. diplomatic boycott over China’s alleged human rights abuses.” —MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin (“It’s truly pathetic that a U.S. media outlet who pushed the Russian collusion hoax for 4 years, the phony Russian bounty story and believes Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation doesn’t believe Tiananmen Square was real.” —former Acting DNI Richard Grenell)

Non sequitur: “A document written in 1787 is inadequate for the 21st century. The Electoral College is poised to create more misfires, with popular vote winners not becoming president, as has happened twice already this century. Territorial expansion has resulted in 16 percent of the U.S. population controlling half the seats in the U.S. Senate. … Let’s face facts: The Constitution isn’t working. It’s time for a little rebellion.” —Catholic University of America professor John Kenneth White (“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” —John Adams)

Village Academic Curriculum: “I would say the governor’s race in Virginia was decided based on the success of a right-wing propaganda campaign that told white parents that they needed to fight against their children being indoctrinated … as being called racists. But that was a propaganda campaign. … And I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught. … This is why we send our children to school and don’t homeschool, because these are the professional educators who have the expertise to teach social studies, to teach history, to teach science, to teach literature. And I think we should leave that to the educators.” —"1619 Project" author Nikole Hannah-Jones

And last… “If science can’t be questioned, it’s not science anymore. It’s propaganda. And that’s the truth.” —NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers