Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

I could win four championships by myself.

- Shaquille O’Neal, who won four titles during his NBA career, during a heated exchange with Charles Barkley, seemingly disregarding his deceased teammate, Kobe Bryant

It was during the pandemic, it was during the protest, it was during an election year.... So it was somewhere where I could come down here and block all that noise out and kind of be totally present with me in the lake, and find some moments of Zen.

- Dan O’Conor after jumping into Lake Michigan on Saturday for the 365th straight day— including many days during which he had to chop a hole in the ice in order to do his jump

I didn’t wear a mask for seven months.

- Valentina Miozzo of Italy who moved to the far north of Norway, within the Arctic Circle, and lived in isolation throughout the pandemic

President Biden attended the NATO summit today and met with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Said Biden, “I think I’m taking all three of those.”

— Seth Meyers The internet was down for almost an hour today. Multiple major websites crashed this morning due to an outage at a company I’d never heard of before, a cloud services company called Fastly, which sounds like it was named by Donald Trump demanding a Diet Coke.

— Jimmy Kimmel

Amazon, CNN, The New York Times, Pinterest, Twitch, Google, eBay and more went offline for 50 minutes. It led to the world’s most productive hour of time in the last 30 years.

— Ibid.

This corrupt gang should disclose its role in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the explosions at the enrichment site in Natanz. They stole important documents from Torquzabad and the Iranian Space Agency. These are no jokes. Extremely important documents have been stolen, and the country’s security has been compromised…They carried out a major operation in Torquzabad. They gave several vanloads of documents to Israel. It was not just one piece of paper. There were several vans. How did they manage to get several vans out of the country with all the checkpoints in this country?

-Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a video, claiming that Israel has infiltrated the highest level of Iranian intelligence and security agencies, resulting in serious intelligence breaches

There is a recurrent theme on the far left that things have never been worse. Kevin Hart expressed a view many hold when he told The New York Times, “You’re witnessing white power and white privilege at an all-time high.” This is one of the big problems with wokeness, that what you say doesn’t have to make sense or jive with the facts or ever be challenged, lest the challenge itself be conflated with racism. But saying white power and privilege is at an all-time high is just ridiculous. Higher than a century ago, the year of the Tulsa race massacre? Higher than the years when the KKK rode unchecked and Jim Crow went unchallenged? Higher than the 1960s when The Supremes and Willie Mays still couldn’t stay in the same hotel as the white people they were working with? Higher than during slavery?

– Bill Maher, HBO

This progressive allergy to acknowledging societal advances is self-defeating. Because progress, and hope that we can achieve it, is the product we’re selling, and having a warped view of reality leads to policies that are warped.

– Ibid.

Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin – don’t fall asleep during the meeting, and please give him my warmest regards!

- Statement by Donald Trump in advance of Pres. Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday

In what way are you Jews? Not Shabbat, not conversion…nothing. In what way are you Jewish? How is this state Jewish? How is it different from France?

- United Torah Judaism leader Moshe Gafni chiding the new Israeli coalition All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black. I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth. I was completely inside the whale; it was completely black. I thought to myself, “There’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.”

- Commercial lobster diver Michael Packard, 56, of Massachusetts, talking to the Cape Cod Times about an incident last week when he was swallowed by a whale and spit out, resulting in serious injuries

MORE QUOTES

Are you supposed to be looking as if you’re enjoying yourselves?

-Queen Elizabeth during a photo-op with world leaders at the G-7 Summit

We have been enjoying ourselves in spite of appearances.

- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in response

It’s important to be able to provide each student the ability every day to reflect and be able to pray as they see fit. The idea that you can just push G-d out of every institution and be successful – I’m sorry, our Founding Fathers did not believe that.

- Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, before signing a bill mandating a moment of silence in all Florida public schools at the Shul of Bal Harbour in Surfside, Florida, this week

You may have wondered, as the world’s biggest industrialized democracies meet this week to discuss imminent global crises, who’s going to represent the United States, us, at this year’s G-7 Summit? Joe Biden can’t do it, obviously. We don’t want to be mean, but you know why he can’t. He just can’t. Kamala Harris could go, but she’s tied up right now getting yelled at by Guatemalan farmers. So who? Well, thankfully, there’s a doctor in the house: Dr. Jill.

– Tucker Carlson, Fox News

A chance? There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know, who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird!

- Jimmy Stewart when asked by Stephen Colbert if there is a chance that coronavirus was released from the Wuhan lab in China I’ve heard what Bennett said [about standing firm against Iran], and I’m concerned, because Bennett does the opposite of what he promises. He will fight Iran the same way he won’t sit with [Yesh Atid leader Yair] Lapid, Labor and Ra’am.

– Parting Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his last speech to the Knesset, assailing his successor

I’m surprised that we have not yet been accused of provoking the Black Lives Matter movement. That would have been a good line of attack.

– Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with NBC

Of course not. We don’t have this kind of habit, of assassinating anybody. That’s one. Number two is I want to ask you: Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman? Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? And they didn’t go there to steal a laptop. They came with political demands. 450 people…have been detained. They’re facing – they’re looking…they’re looking at jail time, between 15 and 25 years. And they came to the Congress with political demands. Isn’t that persecution for political opinions?

– Putin, during his NBC interview, when asked if he ordered the assassination of his political rival and if he clamps down on political dissent