The decade's top 10 quotations

Before our country can move forward, we need to know how we got here in the first place. Here are a few clues:

The top 10 quotations from the last 10 years -- the ones telling us some painful truths about our country, society and worldview; the ones that might inform us of what we need to do as we move forward.

10. "They frankly own the place." -- Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in 2009 admitting the taboo about banks’ influence in Congress.

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These epigrams expose a nation that has internalized and accepted the forces of avarice, corruption, dishonesty, incompetence and insensitivity. Some of them are darkly funny, some of them are gut-wrenchingly sad -- but all of them are warnings. Whether we listen to them or not will be the difference between repeating the last decade's folly or learning from it.

Here's to resolutions for the new decade that finally choose the latter.