“people often ask me, well don’t you have faith in anything? And I always have the same answer, I do have one unshakable [faith], and that is I have an unshakable [faith] in the unreliability of man. I know that no matter what we do, some damn fool will make a mess of it.”
Garrett Hardin, quoted in Julian Simon Hoodwinking the Nation
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
John Milton, quoted in the introduction to the fence-whitewashing excerpt from Mark Twain Tom Sawyer in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae In Flanders Fields
“You fail to overlook the crucial point.”
Samuel Goldwyn, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #2 Oct.-Nov. 2002
“Common sense, that extinct branch of psychology.”
G.K. Chesterton “The Unpsychological Age” in Alvaro De Silva ed., Brave New Family
“This capacity to be fully engaged in the moment yet simultaneously aware of its historic or cultural context was a special trait…”
Electra Slonimsky Yourke’s “Foreword” in Nicolas Slonimsky Perfect Pitch
“The beneficial effect of State intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and, so to speak, visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect, and lie out of sight.... Nor… do most people keep in mind that State inspectors may be incompetent, careless, or even occasionally corrupt… Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favour upon governmental intervention. This natural bias can be counteracted only by the existence, in a given society, as in England between 1830 and 1860, of a presumption or prejudice in favour of individual liberty—that is, of laissez faire. The mere decline, therefore, of faith in self-help… is of itself sufficient to account for the growth of legislation tending towards socialism.”
Albert Venn Dicey Law & Public Opinion
“The greatest of all Chesterton’s gifts was his charity, and he carried it to a very high point; for he suffered fools gladly."
Fulton J. Sheed in “G.K. Chesterton,” in Sidelights on the Catholic Revival, quoted by James V. Schall in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #2 (Oct.-Nov. 2003)