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A compilation of quotations on a variety of issues by national, state and regional writers, well-known personalities, just plain everyday people and from various publications collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.

Quotes for our Times:

Dave Marcus, columnist for Fox News Digital: The invisible hand that governed America during Biden years.

Think about what almost happened. Even if Democrats had somehow gotten Methusela Biden over the finish line, with his new cancer diagnosis, we now know we would have wound up with Kamala 'I’m not taking questions at this time' Harris as president.

Could there be a better example of the fact that, to Democrats, it doesn’t matter in the slightest who is actually in charge? …

There is a reason that we have a president. Leadership matters, and in the last 120 or so days, from securing the border to securing trade deals, President Donald Trump has exemplified just how crucial his job really is.

Paul Mauro, contributor for FOX News Media providing legal and criminal justice analysis: New Orleans jailbreak exposes flat out failures of federal oversight.

At some point, we have to admit the obvious: systems engineered by federal judges, consultants, academics and law firms aren’t delivering safety or reform. They're delivering escapes, lawsuits, public distrust – and cops and corrections officers fearful of doing their jobs without being second-guessed.

The left’s obsession with decarceration and federal micromanagement is proving to be just another failed experiment in softon- crime governance. New Orleans just became its latest victim.

Let’s hope there aren’t anymore, as the escapees remain at large.

Lee Hartley Carter, president of Maslansky + Partners, a language strategist, researcher and author: Democrats' major messaging crisis: The party of opposition without solutions.

The bottom line is that Democrats need to pivot from a reactive, negative strategy to a proactive, solution-oriented approach if they want to win. They should focus on real policies — healthcare reform, economic growth, immigration reform, tariffs — with clear plans to address these issues. Winning hearts and minds requires positive messaging, not just shouting about how bad Trump is. Otherwise, they’ll continue to falter, running against an opponent who has mastered the narrative game and controls the conversation through chaos.

Hugh Hewitt, Fox News contributor: Will Pope Leo XIV reverse the anti-American vibe from the last pope?

Who knows? Nobody. Not even Pope Leo XIV, I would guess, surrounded as he is by a world on fire and a Vatican deep in financial chaos. Every opinion will be premature until after one or two consistories —those occasions when popes add to the men in the College of Cardinals. Pope Leo could do a lot to repair breaches in the Church with some early selections there which heal divisions while also continuing the embrace begun by St. John Paul the Great and continued by Benedict and Francis of a global Church that holds up the divinity of Jesus Christ first and always and usually recalls and broadcasts that the Beatitudes are the quick hack on the whole of the Gospels.