“My favorite reprobate, Jerry Lee Lewis, was so wonderfully gifted that no one has ever been able to produce anything more than plastic mechanical imitations of his music. They reconstruct the bones, but there is no life. Ranked among the five most original and influential pianists of the last century, he had no piano lessons and could not read music. When asked, he would drawl, ‘It was God who gave me my talent. I don’t question God. He can cut my water off anytime.’ The water flowed for more than 70 years. On his 80th birthday he played before a packed house at the London Palladium. Anyone who doesn’t know that Jerry Lee Lewis is an original musical genius has never gotten acquainted with his work. He died at 87 professing his faith in ‘the unlimited grace of Almighty God.’ With a nod to Oscar Wilde, Our Lord calls great saints and great sinners. Respectable folk can be Episcopalians.”

Brent Forrest in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“Never get mad at anybody for knowing more than you do. It’s not their fault.”

“Elizabethtown (KENTUCKY) News” quoted in “Other Suspects I Quotes not by GKC” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #2 (Nov./Dec. 2024)

In my bonus contribution to the National Post “What we’ve lost” series I try to retrieve the bar of soap once used to wash out the mouths of people who swore in the wrong place or at the wrong time, and the self-control that went with it.

“[W]e are learning to do a great many clever things. Unless we are much mistaken the next great task will be to learn not to do them.”

G.K. Chesterton quoted in “News With Views” “compiled by Mark Pilon” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025) [the specific context is using CRISPR to bring back extinct animals].

“It was the glory of Roman law that it protected the individual against the state.”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ [although he describes frankly the considerable degree of legal and constitutional chaos that existed, including Hadrian trying to draw it all into a Perpetual Edict only the Emperor could change]

“We are not very credulous about statistics. It was in some ways unfortunate when men found they could tell lies in Arabic numerals as well as in Roman letters.”

G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly May 12, 1928, quoted in “Statistics” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)

“The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.”

Larry Niven Ringworld [it also turned up in “Random Foolish Quotations” in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (6/04)]

“If someone asks him how he [extremely productive historian Niall Ferguson] manages his time, he says, ‘I get up in the morning and work. My puzzle is with people who spend 10 years not producing a book. What do they do?’”

National Post March 14, 2001