Alan K. Simpson:

It's time to lay it out on the table and let the American people start to chew on it.

Ken Doctor:

It's a box that, once you look inside, you can't not look.

Frank Rich, quoting Robert Frank:

When we reward financial engineers infinitely more than actual engineers, we "lure our most talented graduates to the largely unproductive chase" for Wall Street riches.

Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva:

"Stocks for the long run," "Globalization is good." We repeat slogans to ourselves, because everyone else does. It is not so much bad luck we want to avoid as being on our own.

Peter Baker:

In the days leading up to the 1994 midterm elections, Clinton mocked Republicans for promising to balance the budget while cutting taxes, saying, "They're not serious." In our conversation, Obama used some variation of the phrase "they're not serious" four times in referring to Republican budget plans.

Nicholas Kristof:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976.

CEOs of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001.

Eric Lipton, Mike McIntire, and Don Van Natta Jr.:

While the Chamber of Commerce boasts of representing more than three million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors.

Noteworthy:

If you think "Russia" when you hear "oligarchy", think again.

Decius:

Your right to freedom of speech is an inalienable right. Even if you are rich. That's what an inalienable right is.

Tim Wu:

Market power is rarely seized so much as it is surrendered up, and that surrender is born less of a deliberate decision than of going with the flow.

Mark Twain:

It is desire to be in the swim that makes political parties.