“Well, about everybody’s more liberal than me.” John Gregg, Democratic candidate for Indiana governor

President Obama “cut taxes and spending…He didn’t go on a spending spree. He didn’t break up the too big to fail banks—they’ve only gotten bigger and fail-ier…Under Obama there’s more drilling than ever…Obama spent most of last year conceding the Republican premise that government needs cutting…[T]he Dow was at 7949 when he took office. Now it’s 12,000 and over. Corporate profits are at their highest ever. If he’s a Socialist, he’s a lousy one.” Bill Maher

“Yes, Obama duped young people by not doing every single thing they want. So now they’ll all vote Republican. It’s like when I want some bread, I won’t settle for half a loaf. Instead, I will have a muffin made of broken glass.” Stephen Colbert

“Forget what President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney say they want to do next year. The better question might be: How do they intend to get any of it done… The frequent elections in the House and staggered elections in the Senate, the expansion of the filibuster, the influence of the Supreme Court and the polarization of the political parties combine to constrain power. You can win an election and quickly find you lack the support to pass major priorities.” Ezra Klein

“The whole purpose of a constitution in this country, at its sacred core, is to expand rights, not restrict them.” Ben Jealous

“…the majority of Americans are conservative. They believe in things like the Constitution. I know that’s weird to some people.” Marco Rubio

“…you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you. He can’t murder you, he can’t burn down your house, the only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation where we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress…If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something, but if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise and you learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.” The always-entertaining Alan Simpson, who paired up with Erskine Bowles for an interview on Fareed Zakaria GPS, May 27. FZGPS is always great, but that first segment interview with Bowles and Simpson was especially so. Podcasts are available on iTunes (the audio version is free) or you can read the transcript here.