Quotables

"It can be hard to connect with people when you're a queen... My virtual self can get closer to people than my physical self... Social media has opened a window into my life." -- Queen Rania at Le Web 2009

"Facebook is so endlessly social and inclusive it sometimes reminds me of one of those mega-nightclubs from the late ’80s (Palladium, the Limelight, etc.), only without the music, the alcohol, the drugs, the lights, the sweat, or — it must be said — the people."

-- Lucinda Rosenfeld

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves. - Elias Canetti

"i think the facebook is a chilly new robot and it makes having friends so easy that friendship hardly feels sincere. i'm trying to cut down." -- Mark M.

"An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex."

-- Aldous Huxley

"I'm the barium of the political colon" -- Stephen Colbert

(Emily Lazar, producer of The Colbert Report heard Stephen refer to him as such. This was repeated by Walter Isaacson at Aspen Institute Ideas Festival.)

"People spend their work years trying to be successful and their retirement years trying to be relevant."

-- director of philanthropy, REI

"Companies aren't charities. They're businesses. It doesn't matter why they're offering an unacceptable product -- all that matters is that the product is unacceptable. Companies aren't five-year-olds bringing their fingerpaintings home from kindergarten. We don't have to put on a brave smile and tell them, "that's just lovely dear," and display their wares proudly on the fridge. I don't care if Apple adds DRM because Lars from Metallica has incriminating photos of Steve Jobs, I don't care if Sony BMG put a rootkit on its CDs because they were duped into it by a trickster spirit that appeared to their technologists in a dream. I care whether their product is worth my money. It's the market -- there's no A for Effort."

-- Cory Doctorow

"We need to think of our kids less as victims and more as participants."

-- Anne Collier

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro."

-- languagehat (Tx Hannah)