Quotes of the year 2005 -- my choices.

After writing that last post, on the WaPo's quotes of the year, I got the idea of going through the past year of my writing on this blog to find the quotes I thought were most interesting. Here they are, beginning with a quote from back in January:

"I can't think of any examples where I said, 'Gosh, I wish I had more power.'" -- President Bush

"When you think of the New Testament, they get about 2 of the values and we get about 27." -- Howard Dean

"Christ did not come down from the cross." -- Pope John Paul II (on why he didn't retire)

"But I also know if I can get music without buying it, I'm going to do so." -- Justice David Souter (at oral argument in the Grokster case)

"I can't agree with you. 'Our laws come from God.' If you don't believe it sends that message, you're kidding yourself." -- Justice Antonin Scalia (at oral argument in the Ten Commandments case)

"Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist." -- Camille Paglia (speaking in Madison)

"If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please, for the love of God, don't ever show me in that condition on national television." -- Kenny in the "Best Friends Forever" episode of "South Park"

"Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is." -- Tom Cruise

"What are you, some redneck blogger pig?"-- Claire Fisher on "Six Feet Under" (to her boyfriend, when he defended the war in Iraq)

"Narm." -- Nate Fisher on "Six Feet Under."

"That's for me to know and for your to find out." -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist (responding to a question about whether he's retiring on July 11th, causing me to write "How near death can he be if he's horsing around like that?" He died on September 3rd.)

"The Supreme Court voted last week to undo private property rights and to empower governments to kick people out of their homes and give them to someone else because they feel like it." Rep. Tom Delay (on the Kelo case)

"He's crushing his testicles in tight trousers for world peace." -- John Lydon (insulting Bono)

"We have an American refugee situation on our hands." -- a Red Cross spokesperson (re Katrina)

"We perceive no reason why both parents of a child cannot be women." -- the California Supreme Court

"What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it." -- Christopher Hitchens (on Cindy Sheehan)

"If you're not on drugs, you've got problems." -- Jimmy Kimmel (to Courtney Love)

"There's loads of room for judgment. The judges do judge." -- Justice Stephen Breyer

"They will do what they think is in their interest, however they define it." -- Senator Hillary Clinton (predicting how Democrats would vote on the nomination of John Roberts)

"Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?" -- Senator Tom Coburn (asking the most ridiculous question asked at the Roberts confirmation hearings)

"By becoming John Roberts the chief justice, don't ever forget to be John Roberts, the man." -- Senator Mike DeWine (at the Roberts hearing)

"Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire." -- John Roberts (at his confirmation hearing)

"I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder." -- Werner Herzog (in voiceover in the movie "Grizzly Man")

"I haven't even run out of weed yet." -- one of the New Orleans holdouts (on not evacuating after Katrina)

"Almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black." -- Wolf Blitzer (on the Katrina victims)

"Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." -- Steve Colbert

"She needs more than murder boards. She needs a crash course in constitutional law." -- Arlen Specter (on Harriet Miers)

"I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called." -- Howard Dean

"I know her heart." -- President Bush on Harriet Miers

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." -- President Bush (finally fighting back against war critics)

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." -- Judge John E. Jones III (in the Intelligent Design case)

"I don't expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom." -- President Bush (on the Iraq war)

"We will talk to each other, and we will connect with each other, and we will weave the country together like a piece of cloth." -- A voter in Iraq

"I have no friends." -- Howard Stern

"We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." -- Senator Joe Lieberman

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them." -- Harold Pinter (accepting the Nobel Prize)

"I for one do not dance to dance music; disco for me is a lofty metaphysical mode that induces contemplation." -- Camille Paglia (criticizing Madonna's new CD)