Quotables

‘At least you can return the phone.’

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on President Obama’s recent comparison of Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which Samsung has recalled because of its battery failures and risk of catching fire. The Obama administration says health insurance premiums will rise an average of 25 percent across 39 states.

‘It’s just constant violence over here.’

A Chicago resident, identified in the Chicago Tribune only as Lisa in order to protect her safety, on the violence this year in parts of the city. So far this year, Chicago has had 623 murders and more than 3,000 shootings.

‘There are three of us against the world—China, Philippines, and Russia. It’s the only way.’

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on his country’s pivot away from the United States and toward China as his rift with President Obama grows.

‘A dangerous, authoritarian precedent.’

Peter Tatchell, a homosexual activist in Northern Ireland, on an October ruling by the Court of Appeal in Belfast against a bakery that refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Tatchell said he disagrees with the owners of the bakery on gay marriage but that “this verdict is a defeat for freedom of expression.”

‘To say that the Jewish people have no connection to Jerusalem is like saying that the sun creates darkness.’

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the United Nations World Heritage Committee considered a resolution about Jerusalem’s Temple Mount that ignores Jewish ties to the site.