Quotations — ridiculous and wise — related to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination . . .

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan: “Don’t fall in love with politicians. They’re all a disappointment. They can’t help it, they just are.”

(a) Chelsea Clinton: “I think (my mother) will be a better president (than my father) because she’ll be more progressive and she’s more prepared. She’ll just hit the ground running from Day One in a way that my father was not as equipped to do.” (b) Bill Clinton: “For this time in our history, I believe that Hillary will be a better president than I was.”

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass: “The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. . . . My argument is not with him — but with the national media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. . . . Why is (Barack) Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he’s a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his home town the way he condemns those darn Washingtion lobbyists?”

Hillary Clinton: “I think it’s important to consider the effects of ergonomic hazards. Injury from repetitive motion and exertion is more of a silent epidemic that will cause a slow but steady erosion of people’s health and productivity. I support ergonomics regulation.”

Obama, in Indiana, several days following his San Francisco comments about simple folk clinging to God and guns: “Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true.”

Washington Post columnist David Broder: “How does anyone persuade the first serious African American candidate, the leader in every relevant measure of popular support, to abandon a historic candidacy? And how does anyone persuade the first serious female candidate, the possessor of the best brand name in Democratic politics, and a politician who has battled back from seeming defeat at least three times already, that she should quit?”

1960s Chicago Seven leftist radical (and former husband of Jane Fonda) Tom Hayden: “(Hillary Clinton) was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. . . . She was involved in the New Haven defense of (Black Panther) Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970. . . . Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in defending Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being Communists.”

Political strategist and commentator Karl Rove: “Obama’s call for post-partisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘fierce urgency of now’ in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership in any major legislative battle.”

University of Pennsylvania professor Camille Paglia, on Salon.com: “I’m puzzled by the optimism of so many commentators and Democratic functionaries who are prophesying Hillary’s graceful withdrawal by mid-June. Is there anything in the Clintons’ tawdry history to support such a thesis? Why wouldn’t they play smiley-face rope-a-dope now and smash-mouth alley-and-ambush fisticuffs to the bitter end — meaning the convention in August? It’s now or never for Ms. Hill. Even if Obama loses this fall, there’s no guarantee whatever that she would win the Democratic nomination in 2012. That hoss will have been around the rodeo way too many times.”

The Washington Post, in an editorial: “It seems to us that the whole sorry (Rev. Wright) episode raises legitimate questions about (Mr. Obama’s) judgment. Given the long and close relationship between Mr. Obama and the Rev. Wright, voters will ask: How could Mr. Obama have been surprised by the Rev. Wright’s views? How could he not have seen this coming?”

Commentator Ben Stein, on CBS News: Sunday Morning: “In a free society, what we are and who we are depends on us, except for the very most poor among us, where the government can indeed make a difference. But for the huge bulk of us Americans, no matter what any Republican or any Democrat promises, it’s up to the people in our house, not the White House. For most of us, what the politicians say is just sideshow barking, and when the circus leaves town we’ve got to get back to basics: work, save, and teach your children well, and enjoy the political sideshow. But it’s just show business, not real business.”