'We now record fetal heartbeats at 14 days post-conception. We record fetal brainwaves at 39 days post-conception. And I don’t expect you to answer this, but I do expect you to pay attention to it as you contemplate these big issues. We have this schizophrenic rule of the law where we have defined death as the absence of those, but we refuse to define life as the presence of those.'

Sen.Tom Coburn,

speaking to Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor,

confirmation hearing,

July 15, 2009

'You can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can't.'

Robert Downey Jr.

'Christ's insistence on the power of children is very striking. Almost more than anything else in the Gospel it proves that in God's eyes being something comes before doing something. He sets a little child among his apostles as an example of what he loves. ... How consistent it is with the incredible tenderness of God that his Christ, the Immortal Child, should be conceived by the power of the Spirit in the body of a child. That a child should bear a Child, to redeem the world. Our Lady was at the most fourteen when the angel came to her; perhaps she was younger. The whole world trembled on the word of a child, on a child's consent.'

Caryll Houselander

'Do you ever wonder why God values obedience more than sacrifice? ... Because obedience is someone else's idea of what you should sacrifice.'

David Manuel