Quotable & Notable

“It’s always been and always will be the same in the world: The horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.”

-- Anonymous

“The Bushies don’t want to mend it, they want to end it -- and they are quite up-front about it.”

-- Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins on the Bush administration’s proposed Social Security “reforms”

“There’s a train coming that’s packed with people who are going to need help for the next 35 years.”

-- Stephen Robinson, 20-year Army veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. About 1 million American troops have served so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon, and some experts predict that 100,000 of them will require mental health treatment.

“For many years, [the] poem was presented as a problem, like an algebraic equation. … That would discourage anyone from enjoying poetry.”

-- U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser, who hails from Garland, Neb. One of his goals to popularize poetry is to persuade newspapers to print more.

2.1 million

-- The number of new jobs the Bush administration says will be created in 2005, which is significantly lower than the 3.6 million new jobs figure the Bush reelection team used throughout the past election year

National Catholic Reporter, January 7, 2005