Quotes of the Year 2010

Our annual collection of the dippy, inane, and occasionally brilliant

Now a firm Reg tradition, Quotes of the Year is where we round up the stupidest things we've heard all year – mix them up with the cleverest bon mots we've come across – and leave you to decide which is which. It's a shame all can't have prizes – especially repeat offenders such as Jeff Jarvis, Stephen Fry, Cory Doctorow and Eric Schmidt.

“I'm too busy ending two wars”

St Julian D'Assange explains to a journalist why he's got so much on his plate, he can't right now. It sure beats, "I'm sorry, I'm washing my hair".

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“Under the studio lights, he can seem – with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead – like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth”

The New Yorker magazine's Raffi Khatchadourian searches for the appeal of St.Julian – and comes up with Thomas Jerome Newton.

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“I couldn't help but ponder, as I clicked through this image to read your article, exactly when did Assange grow his extra digit?”

Reg reader "Lee" mailed us on 9 September. Assange has always had an extra digit on his right hand – just as every memorable Bond character needs a distinguishing physical characteristic. But we first noticed in August.

“Now ensconced and ankled bejeweled in a country estate, the media begging for his blovia, Julian is defiant, a century of anger ready for tapping, he keens, he says it again, his media sock-puppets repeats ad nauseum, his precious hornyisms sock-rocketed by Google 500 million times and soon, he warns, thermonuclear armageddon. The aged little girls and guys swoon and scream as if it was the 60s again when Youth reigned futurelessly.”

Veteran document disseminator and Cryptome operator John Young was asked to be Wikileaks front man in 2006. He provided running commentary on the Wikileaks saga that was as interesting as anything WikiLeaks put out in 2010. See here for the full posting, and here and here for the Wikleaks mailing list archive.