“It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
Emailed by a friend Feb. 2, 2026 and attributed to Noel Coward, which is confirmed by https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/178186-it-s-discouraging-to-think-how-many-people-are-shocked-by saying
“The word Filistini – Palestinian – had first been used in 1898 by the short story writer, Khalil Beidas, in an introduction to a Russian guidebook of the Holy Land; in 1908, a former Ottoman official Najib Azouri suggested the expansion of Jerusalem Sanjak to include the southern parts of the Beirut Vilayat: ‘the progress of the land of Filastin depends on this.’”
Simon Sebag Montefiore Jerusalem: The Biography A History of the Middle East
“Whether or not these people deeply understood or had even considered the philosophical arguments for and against euthanasia was entirely unclear. They were mere cheerleaders for the latest innovation in Being a Very Good and Progressive Person. Ideologues.”
Amy Hamm in National Post Feb. 3, 2026 [the usual use of “ideologue” to mean a person who doesn’t immediately adopt my opinion after I state it, in an otherwise sound column about the MAID slippery slope].
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say if Mark Carney cannot answer that question, and he can’t, then the alleged pivot from foolish spending to wise investment was itself folly on a massive scale.
“Watching his video is perhaps the closest you will come to entering the mind of a banana without going near a fruit bowl.”
Bryony Gordon in www.telegraph.co.uk Jan. 18, 2008 [the video in question being Tom Cruise explaining Scientology].
“We decided the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.’”
Kevin Avram, founder of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, quoted in British Columbia Report Feb. 8, 1993 [specifically regarding their approach to fighting taxes but obviously it applies to life far more broadly]
“Whatever men have rightly said, no matter who or where, is the property of us Christians.”
Origen, who applied long-established scholarly methods of understanding ancient texts to Biblical ones, quoted in Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
“I don’t know if you have ever turned over a dead animal, but depending on how ripe the carcass is, there is a whiff that rises so strongly that the air itself changes color, and a kind of greasy film of rot coats your insides.”
David Beresford, in a piece on a hideous expensive cheese someone once gave him, in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 #8 (Issue 57, 7-8/04)