* “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”–George Kennan, the architect of America’s Cold War policy, in 1997.
* “I’m where George Kennan was. It was a mistake to enlarge NATO by admitting former Warsaw Pact states. It fueled resentment, encouraged paranoia and embarrassed democrats in Moscow who’d pushed against Communism at some cost.”–Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal.
* “If Putin gets away with this, the post-1945 peace in Europe will be over.”–Trudy Rubin, Washington Post.
* “Russkiy Mir.”– “Russian World”: The idea that Russian civilization extends everywhere that ethnic Russians live.
* “Putin seeks at the very least a two-tiered NATO, in which no allied forces are deployed on former Warsaw Pact territory.”–Robert Kagan, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
* “We are 50 percent-plus of global GDP.”–National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who contrasted this number to Russia’s 3 percent share of the world’s economic output.
* “Something China does not want to see.”–Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
* “Nie wieder Krieg” (“Never again war”). Still a familiar, pacifist strain in post-World War II Germany.
* “There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell.”–Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations.
* “Mr. Zelenskyy, the showman and (comic) performer, has been unmasked by reality. …It’s clear what the problem is: Mr. Zelenskyy’s tendency to treat everything like a show.”–Olga Rudenko, editor of the Kyiv Independent.
* “This is a clear emotional and psychological reaction to the years and even decades of the West and the U.S. being rather dismissive of Russian security concerns.”–Former Soviet diplomat Pavel Palazhchenko.
* “Our European skies are open skies. They’re open for those who connect people, not for those who seek to brutally aggress.”–Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, on the EU’s banning of Russian aircraft from flying into or over EU airspace.
* “(Great Britain is) moving from government restrictions to personal responsibility.”–UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in announcing the end of the last domestic coronavirus restrictions in England.
* “There’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante.”–Federal prosecutor Christopher Perras.
* “The question is whether all those increases are directly correlated to those causes or whether people are taking advantage.”–Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, on recent food price hikes that indicate some businesses taking advantage of the pandemic and supply chain interruptions.
* “We are facing a demographic crisis because of low birth rates. For the first time in the nation’s history, the population growth of the 20-to-64 age group—the workforce age group—has turned negative.”–Former USF finance professor Murad Antia.
* “(If confirmed, Ketanji Brown Jackson) would be the first justice to have served as a federal public defender… . Not since Thurgood Marshall has a justice had such extensive experience representing criminal defendants.”–Ruth Marcus, WaPo.
* “We’ve lost more than the man the Wall Street Journal called ‘the funniest writer in America.’ We’ve lost the last funny conservative.”–Christopher Buckley, the author of “Thank You For Smoking” and “Make Russia Great Again,” on the passing of P.J. O’Rourke.
* “The ability of separate juries to find guilt in a police misconduct case and a racially motivated murder in the same week is a sign that the process of accountability in the arena of civil rights enforcement is more assertive, more public, than at any point in decades.”–Former federal prosecutor Michael McAuliffe.
* “A menace to society.”–How Tampa City Council member Guido Maniscalco characterized rapidly rising rents in Tampa.