We have a responsibility to provide a moral framework for our kids.

— John Arthur Eaves Jr., Democratic candidate for governor in Mississippi, who once “rebuked the Democratic National Committee for leaving Jesus out of an Easter statement” and says he wants a “new day in Mississippi, where our children go to school with voluntary, student-led school prayers.”

John Arthur sounds pretty good. He’s going to cut the sales tax and put prayer back in schools. Put the Good Lord back in everything. That’s a priority.

— Charles Salley, standing behind the cash register at “Pap’s Place, a diner on Main Street in Ackerman, [where] the Bible was open under the Elvis albums and the Ten Commandments were on an engraved plaque in the window.”

I would urge people not to let the psychology of fear infect the way they act. Otherwise we have let the terrorists win without anybody striking a blow. … Life involves a level of risk.

— presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, addressing the New Year’s Eve terrorist threats in December 1999.

Don’t be afraid. … All of those terrorists combined can’t invade us and take us over. We are too big. We are too strong.

— presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to students in Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed, in May 2002.

There is no reason to go back into denial, and that is essentially what the Democratic candidates want to do: They want to go back, to put the country in reverse to the 1990s.

— presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani at Regent University, June 2007.

Our foreign policy could change tomorrow, and they’d still want to attack us. … They want to kill us and attack us because we represent the infidel, modern world.

— presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to New Hampshire voters, July 2007.

I do think he rose to greatness after the World Trade Center, but it wasn’t because he was an expert on terrorism but because he was an affected and obviously level-headed leader when we didn’t need cheerleading, we needed honesty. That’s the tone he set. But it wasn’t because he was some kind of expert on terrorism.

— Peter Gross, a New Jersey lawyer whose son “suffered brain damage when he was shot by a 69-year-old Palestinian man on top of the Empire State Building in 1997, an outburst that killed one and injured six;” Oct. 9.

What it looks like to me is there are three of us that are very competitive with each other. They have spent millions of dollars on television advertising. It is a little more difficult to figure out what is going on with me, because I haven’t spent any money on television advertising. … But I think what is much more important to Iowa caucusgoers is seeing you in the flesh. Seeing you stand before them, look them in the eye and answer their hard questions.

— presidential candidate John Edwards in Iowa, Oct. 9, explaining the importance of grass-roots campaigning in the wake of third-quarter fundraising reports that showed he raised about $7 million, a third of that raised by candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I’ve enjoyed watching these fellows. I’ve got to admit, it was getting a little boring without me. But I’m glad to be here now.

— presidential candidate Fred Thompson, Oct. 9, after participating in his first presidential debate.

All he has to do is not fall asleep. All he has to do is not throw up. All he has to do is not drool. Has there ever been a major presidential candidate with lower expectations on the eve of his first debate than Fred Thompson?

— Roger Simon writing on Politico.com, Oct. 8, before candidate Thompson’s first debate.

The freedom to build upon the past is necessary for creativity and innovation to thrive. We will use and promote our cultural heritage in the public domain. We will make, share, adapt, and promote open content. We will listen to free music, look at free art, watch free film, and read free books. All the while, we will contribute, discuss, annotate, critique, improve, improvise, remix, mutate, and add yet more ingredients into the free culture soup.

— from the manifesto posted on the freeculture.org site.

Part of what’s so tricky about this movement is trying to pry apart access to entertainment from some of the more serious issues, like access to medicine. The movement does itself a disservice by blending all the issues together.

— Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, who says freeculture.org “should pick more consequential problems to rally around than access to music.”

Some say illegal downloading couldn’t possibly hurt successful artists, which may very well be true. But we rely on a few successful artists to compensate for all the new, risky ones who don’t recoup what’s invested in them.

— Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, which, “as part of its continuing copyright crackdown, … has already sued about 18,000 computer users nationwide since September 2003” for illegally downloading copyrighted music.

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

— Thomas Friedman, writing in the Oct. 10 New York Times, referring to what he calls “the Quiet Americans.”

A tax loophole the size of a Mack truck is right now generating unwarranted and unfair windfalls to a privileged group of money managers. To no one’s surprise, these individuals are driving right through this $12-billion-a-year hole.

— Leo J. Hindery Jr., a private equity executive, discussing the tax structure that favors private equity and hedge firms.

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues appearing Thursdays.