Thinking ahead

"We won't fight it because we need the savings as well [if elected to government]." – A federal Coalition MP, quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald on the Labor government's mid-year budget.

Obligations of office

"This is all state property, and as the elected president, Putin uses it according to the law. What's more, he's obliged to, in many cases." – A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to reports that Putin has the use of several palaces, a luxury yacht and 58 helicopters and planes, one with a golden toilet.

Losers

"The demographics race we're losing badly. We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term." – US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham [WP 30/8]

Overdue

"This Republican Party base is white, ageing and dying off." – Senator Graham.

Not quite

"Kofi, they've made an honest man of me." – Colin Powell, at the time US secretary of state, speaking to then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan six weeks after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when US forces briefly thought they had found the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" that Powell and his boss Dubya used as a pretext for the invasion.

Impressive

"I could only be impressed by the resilience of this man, who had endured so much to argue for a war he clearly did not believe in." – Kofi Annan on Colin Powell.

Entrepreneur

"The danger is she will be remembered not for her cold-heartedness and brutality but for being a woman entrepreneur in an emerging field dominated by men." – A US academic on the murder of Griselda Blanco, former cocaine gang boss and convicted murderer.