Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

The fifth and final book of the Hitchhiker's Series.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

"...each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws . . . In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It's a flaw that is endemic to modern life, I think--endemic, too, in the American character--and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics" (2-3).

"...over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people, and so avoid joining a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy" (214).

"Moreover, nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith--such as the politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps (off rhythm) to the gospel choir or sprinkles in a few biblical citations to spice up a thoroughly dry policy speech" (215-216).

"To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values" (218-219).

"We should also acknowledge that conservatives--and Bill Clinton--were right about welfare as it was previously structured: By detaching income from work, and by making no demands on welfare recipients other than a tolerance for intrusive bureaucracy and an assurance that no man lived in the same house as the mother as his children, the old AFDC program sapped people of their initiative and eroded their self-respect. Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare--not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people's lives..." (256).

"What would that be worth to all of us--an America in which crime has fallen, more children are cared for, cities are reborn, and the biases, fear, and discord that black poverty feeds are slowly drained away? Would it be worth what we've spent in the past year in Iraq? Would it be worth relinquishing demands for estate tax repeal? It's hard to quantify the benefits of such changes--precisely because the benefits would be immeasurable" (259).

"Moreover, while America's revolutionary origins and republican form of government might make it sympathetic toward those seeking freedom elsewhere, America's early leaders cautioned against idealistic attempts to export our way of life; according to John Quincy Adams, America should not go 'abroad in search of monsters to destroy' nor 'become the dictatress of the world.' Providence had charged America with the task of making a new world, not reforming the old..." (280).

"That was the best of the American spirit, I thought--having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control--and therefore responsibility--over our own fate" (356).