"The American public turning out and saying we want our government to work for us."
—Senator Patty Murray in response to a question asking what was most inspiring about this year. 12/12/08 Year in Review

"Making sure the solution isn't worse than the problem. I don't want short range decisions to be so destructive that it hurts the mission of state government."
—WA Secretary of State Sam Reed in response to the question, "What's the greatest threat facing the United States today?" in reference to problems in the economy. 12/12/08 Year in Review

"We are a city that is starting to understand urban density. It's not just the other guy taking the bus."
--Denny Onslow, Harbor Properties

"The role of print media is going to change. Until reading devices - and the content for those devices - are more readily available and accessible, I don't see print media going away completely."
-- Susan Hildreth, Seattle City Librarian

"There's lots of different ways that anybody can contribute. I mentioned the humble task of just serving other people... If you are going to be a medical anthropologist, feel free to contribute to medical anthropology, but there are also other ways to contribute too to that problem and many others, and I would encourage you to keep that in mind. Just because you're a hammer doesn't mean everything is a nail. And just because you're a medical anthropologist doesn't mean you have to only write books."
-- Paul Farmer

"[S]o many adults think that my generation is just full of gamers and slackers and that we're the 'entitlement generation'. We're really not. There is a huge sense, there are thousands of kids out in the world today that are trying to make a difference... they're just afraid that they'll make a fool of themselves. That it won't make a difference. That 'I'm just one kid, what can I do?'"

- Dallas Jessup, National Jefferson Awards Nominee

"The serious challenge we have, particularly in our community where there's a high rate of volunteerism, is around raising the capacity of our nonprofits to effectively utilize volunteers... A big part of it is volunteer management... We've got some wonderful systems here locally for helping people engage... but what we have to do is make sure that when people show up to engage, that nonprofit has the right kind of training, the right kind of staff in place, the right kind of leadership mentality to really make use of volunteers in a high value way."

- Nancy Long, Executive Director of Executive Service Corps of Washington