"[There is] an increasing insistence by the customers on using consumption to express themselves, to help in fashioning their own identities....For increasing numbers of Americans, the clothes they wear are not simply material objects; on the contrary, they are viewed...as the most basic expression of life style, indeed of identity itself."

"What can I say about Joey that hasn’t already been said? He reinvented metal drumming for the modern era and brought with him an energy that I have yet to see anyone match, ever. Like someone threw a drum set down a stairwell and it magically sounded good as fuck. His style was so unique, you just know exactly when you are listening to him play. Nothing makes me wanna run through some drywall more than Joey’s drumming. RIP to another goat."

"It is important for us to be knowledgeable, to understand certain psychological and pedagogical principles in order to be a good teacher, but it is even more important to be a good witness to Jesus Christ, to have a disciple's spirituality, to be in an ongoing conversion to Jesus Christ, the living word of God, a conversion that turns you inside out and sets you on fire with love for God and all others, even the last, the littlest and the least."

"If you look at the class that I’m a part of, the 2020 freshman class, anyone who flipped a seat was a woman, a minority, or a veteran. When I look at the makeup of our class, our class looks like America; that’s the message we’re taking across the country."

"I am proud of what I have accomplished, especially while serving as chief justice, at the time I joined the court, it was marked by acrimony. When I became chief justice, we proved that good people who may differ in their opinions can come together and accomplish important things for the people we serve – and we do it amicably."

"I have served on the Court with Bob Young for more than twenty years and there is no Justice who has brought a greater intellect, work ethic, and conscientious commitment to his judicial responsibilities than Bob Young. He has left an extraordinary legacy with regard to the work of the Court and the operation of a fair and responsible justice system in Michigan. In particular, Bob Young’s leadership as Chief Justice of this Court has been of lasting significance in rendering the judiciary of our state leaner, more efficient and accountable, and better focused upon serving "we the people" of Michigan. His impact in furthering the equal rule of law in Michigan will be felt for many years to come."

"All the elements of the democratic method are means to render voting practically effective and politically significant, and all the elements of the democratic ideals are moral extensions and elaborations of the features of the method that make voting work."

"As a rough description of the realities of the democratic process when it is applied to large-scale systems, and of the values of large-scale democracy, Riker's argument has much to be said for it (cf. chap. 16 below). However, his argument is subject to some grave difficulties. First, as critics have pointed out, his "liberal democracy" does not escape the difficulties of "populist democracy." If his criticisms of the ambiguity of social choice are correct, then simply because citizens vote to remove officials from office in an election does not provide adequate grounds for determining what the outcome means. Second, the extent to which voting cycles are a genuine problem in democratic associations is unclear; some social theorists have concluded that the importance Riker and others have attributed to voting cycles is exaggerated."

"We can say that voting […] is at the heart of both the method and the ideal of democracy."

"The question of whether particular goals are achievable by specified means (or indeed by any means at all) is an elementary and unavoidable question about any theory of justice."

"People ask me, 'Why Des Moines?' I say, 'Why not, you ignorant motherfucker!'"

"You come into this world a zero, and you leave a zero."

"Sometimes we think that we're gonna be the first people to cross the genres of human and superhuman. We've got to live up to this fucking monster we created and it's bigger than we are."

"Boz, who had no patience with Science, always confused north and south."

"There was nothing like shared meals, so the experts at IBM claimed, for overcoming one's basic disbelief in the existence of other people."

"The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace."

"Religious faith often finds itself at odds with story-telling. Puritans ban acting companies. Islam is uneasy about all forms of representation. And why? Because the experience of walking out of the theater after a performance is a paradigm of disillusionment, and religious people are officially supposed to believe, first and foremost, in their own literal faith, from which there are no exits. They've taken the big leap, and live, ever after, in free fall."

"He especially liked ads for shampoos and hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate and provide with food."

"...there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:"

"Marvin Kolodny responded with a boyish grin and offered his hand. An American flag has been tattooed on his right forearm. On a scroll circling the flagpole was the following inscription:"

"The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any of those things authentically until we find out who we really are and be that person, inside and out, instead of the person other people want us to be. Usually those other people, if they want us to be something we aren’t, are using us as a laboratory for working out their own identity problems."

"Jobs are like going to church: it’s nice once or twice a year to sing along and eat something and all that, but unless you really believe there’s something holy going on, it gets to be a drag going in every single week."

"All the things that happen and seem so important at the time, and yet you forget them, one after another."

"People in intolerable circumstances will pray to anything. Truly, there are no atheists in foxholes: the men there pray to the bombs that they may land somewhere else."