Verbatim

"The mission accomplished sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln saying that their mission was accomplished."
U.S. President Bush,
on the banner used as a backdrop for his appearance aboard an aircraft carrier to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May. His spokesman later clarified: while the Navy requested the banner, the White House made it

"If someone invaded Texas, we'd do the same thing."
Lieut. Colonel Kim Keslung,
U.S. orthopedic surgeon tending to the wounded in Iraq, on local resistance to U.S. forces

"It's like ... asking whether a venomous snake will bite."
Hwang Jang Yop,
highest ranking defector from North Korea, when asked during a trip to the U.S. if Kim Jong Il is a threat

"Anybody would have to acknowledge it's a very rutted and bumpy map at present."
Richard Armitage,
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, on the status of the "road map" for peace in the Middle East

"Just one telephone call would have stopped it, one. Is that too much to ask, really, having served the royal family for 21 years?"
Paul Burrell,
Princess Diana's former butler, on how the royal family could have prevented him from publishing a memoir that her two sons say would "mortify" their mother

"The terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world many years before Sept. 11, 2001."
Condoleezza Rice,
White House National Security Adviser, in a speech, faulting prior Administrations for ignoring the mounting terrorist threat

"The sound is rather like a large jet plane flying 100 feet above your house in the middle of the night."
John Cramer,
U.S. physicist, who concluded the Big Bang was not very loud after analyzing radiation left over from the universe's genesis