"It is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." - Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
"More dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade." - Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on "criminal" George Bush.
"I've been called an anti-Semite. I've been called a bigot. I've been called senile. I've been called a plagiarist. And so forth." - Former US president Jimmy Carter on criticisms following his new book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.
"They don't need a reverse gear. They need a stop button." - US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice after Iran declared it was ready "even for war" and Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran's nuclear programme had "no reverse gear".
"I have never seen a crisis of this depth before. There seems to be no solution in sight." - John Robertson, an independent economist in Zimbabwe, where inflation reached 14,000 per cent.
"A first killing is like your first love. You never forget it." - Alexander Pichushkin, Russia's "Chessboard Killer", sentenced to life in prison after being convicted for 48 murders.
"They are walking into speeding cars. They are walking into buses. They are walking into one another." - Declaring war on "iPod oblivion", New York state senator Carl Kruger proposes a draft law that would make it an offence for anyone to listen to an MP3 player when crossing the street.
"If it were up to me, I would close Guantánamo, not tomorrow but this afternoon." - Former US secretary of state Colin Powell.
"Thou shalt not make rude gestures behind the steering wheel." - From a Vatican document using biblical language in a serious attempt to address road rage and road deaths.
"Bye. I don't think we'll miss you." - A smiling Cherie Blair saying goodbye to the media in Downing Street. Less elegantly, her husband Tony left office in June saying the media was "like a feral beast just tearing people and reputations to bits".
"Look, this isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'." - Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay rejecting any threat to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic after Russia planted a flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole.
"Of course kidnapping is a very successful policy, and I order all my mujahideen to kidnap foreigners of any nationality, wherever they may find them." - Taliban commander Mansour Dadullah following the kidnap of 22 South Koreans in Afghanistan.
"I identify with Christian values, but what have those got to do with going to bed with a prostitute? This is a private matter." - Italian deputy Cosimo Mele, after being caught with a call-girl.