Quotables

‘Romney didn’t win, did he?’

Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., justifying his false 2012 comments on the Senate floor that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes in the previous decade.

‘We got one conventional weapon; they got five nuclear weapons.’

National security expert Michael Waltz on the trade of five leading Taliban fighters for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 29, now charged with desertion. The Taliban held Bergdahl for five years, and the prison swap for his release championed by President Obama is now under scrutiny.

‘Absolutely blown away.’

Microbiologist Freya Harrison on her and her colleagues’ reaction to how effective a remedy for eye infections from Bald’s Leechbook, a 10th-century medical volume, turned out to be. Harrison and others on an “AncientBiotics” team plan to test other remedies from the past.

‘Orwell today would tell us that the Islamic State is Islamic and shame those who refuse to acknowledge a truth so plain.’

Author, former Muslim, and critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali on how she is inspired by 20th-century author George Orwell.

‘If the UN is so concerned about the future of the Palestinian people, it should be asking why President Abbas is in the tenth year of a five-year presidential term or why Hamas uses the Palestinian people as human shields.’

Israeli ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor in response to a statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that called on Israel but not the Palestinian Authority to make concessions in the region’s ongoing conflict.