Quotations ripe for picking in a garden of topical items..

Today's most influential living economist, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman:

After World War II, opinion was socialist while practice was free market; currently, opinion is free market while practice is heavily socialist. We (free-marketers) have largely won the battle of ideas (though no such battle is ever won permanently); we have succeeded in stalling the progress of socialism, but we have not succeeded in reversing its course. We are still far from bringing practice into conformity with opinion.

Brookings Institution education researcher Tom Loveless, on why U.S. students show gains on math performance tests while faring poorly in international comparisons:

(U.S. standardized tests in math are) far too easy. We have downplayed arithmetic. By and large, American students don't know how to work with fractions very well and don't know how to work with decimals. This handicaps their performance internationally.

John Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," on the literacy crisis facing boys:

Part of it is biological and part of it is sociological, but boys are definitely drifting down. We've been testing kids in America for the last 25 years and finding out that boys are doing worse than girls. But we don't do enough to change that.

Yale professor David Gelernter:

The plain-spoken moralist for whom religion matters greatly, the common man who seems too small for the presidency but is confronted in office by a cataclysm that re-creates him; who rises to the challenge and transcends it; who faces a tough re-election battle and wins it; who redefines the nation's mission in the world and emerges a hero - that is a traditional American story. It is Lincoln's story. . . . No president matches Lincoln's greatness, but in modern times this was Harry Truman's story; and today it is George W. Bush's also.

Actress Nicole Kidman, on why she isn't changing her affectional preference:

Oh, I wish I loved women, but I don't. I mean, I love them, but physically, chemically, they just don't do it for me. I love the way a man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look.

Edward Luttwak, senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Strategic and International Studies:

At present (Army soldiers) are so few, it is pointed out, that not enough troops can be sent to Iraq to contain the insurgency - and even this insufficient number requires excessively long tours of duty, repeat deployments to Iraq without a decent interval at home, and the mobilization of too many National Guard and Reserve personnel for too long. These contentions are valid and the consequences are serious indeed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on threats to the modern world: Continued...