“It really is a free-speech issue, and free-speech issues are often unpopular. That’s not what should happen at a university.”

– Political science professor Lance LeLoup, associate vice provost for international programs at Washington State University, commenting on a verbal clash between campus protesters supporting a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and two faculty members accused of trying to intimidate them.

“I can’t imagine another doctor with moxie will come in here.”

– Mary Ann Murphy, executive director of the nonprofit organization Partners with Families and Children, saying the Spokane Regional Health Board’s dismissal without cause of Dr. Kim Thorburn as regional health officer will make it hard to find a competent replacement.

“I am tired – I am tired – of comparing Washington state to 49 other states who are mediocre.”

– Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, saying the goal of school reform efforts addressed in the Washington Learns report released last week is to measure up to other countries in the global economy.

“Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”

– Entertainer Elton John, arguing in an interview with the Observer newspaper that religion encourages bigotry against gays and lesbians.

“This document proposes that lesbian and gay people be viewed not in the entirety of their lives, but in one dimension only – the sexual dimension. No other group in the church is singled out in this way.”

– Francisco DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, commenting on a policy adopted by U.S. Catholic bishops sending gays a message that they are welcome in the church but expected to be celibate.

“This is really the fifth time we’ve ‘run out of oil.’ “

– Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Yergin, predicting that despite dire claims that the world’s petroleum reserves are approaching exhaustion, peak oil production is about a quarter-century away.

“City fathers will tell you, ‘That’s not the kind of growth you manage. It manages you.’ “

– Eastern Washington University economist Grant Forsyth, talking about projections that some Inland Northwest communities – Liberty Lake, Post Falls and Hayden – are likely to see annual population increases from 7 percent to 10 percent over the next five years.

“We’ll succeed unless we quit.”

– President Bush, speaking at a banquet in Hanoi about the prospects of bringing freedom and political stability to Iraq.

“I feel like I just ran a sub-four-minute mile. The endorphins are kicking in.”

– Gonzaga Prep grad Tim Egan, a New York Times reporter, after winning the National Book Award in nonfiction for “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.”