“the sanest of all human impulses, the impulse that bids us put our trust in industry and a defined aim.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Lunacy and Letters,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

“History is a vaccine against bad ideas. Unfortunately, current problems arise largely from a recycling of bad ideas from the past.”

Valerius Geist, Wildlife Conservation Policy

“The state is not the source of individual rights or of social community. It presupposes that these exist and are worth protecting, and that individuals reciprocally benefit from their interactions with one another…. The state becomes a moral imperative precisely because there is something of value that is worth protecting from the unbridled use of force by those who forsake tradition, family, and friends. A set of forced exchanges from existing rights does not create the original rights so exchanged… A forced exchange does not create culture and sense of community, it protects them by removing the need for compelling or allowing everyone to act as a policeman in his own estate.”

Richard Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

Réné Descartes, Discours de la Méthode (I’ve seen it variously translated; the original is “Ce n'est pas assez d'avoir l'esprit bon, mais le principal est de l'appliquer bien.”)

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. If the cause of the trouble lies in your own character, set about reforming your principles; who is there to hinder you? If it is the failure to take some apparently sound course of action that is vexing you, then why not take it, instead of fretting? ‘There is an insuperable obstacle in the way.’ In that case, do not worry; the responsibility for inaction is not yours. ‘But life is not worth living with this undone.’ Why then, bid life a good-humoured farewell; accepting the frustration gracefully, and dying like any other man whose actions have not been inhibited.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A serious house on serious earth”

Philip Larkin, a non-believer, in his poem “Church Going”, describing what churches used to be and wondering what will happen if nobody goes any more, quoted by fellow non-believer Robert Fulford in National Post Dec. 24, 2005

“She could sing like a Florence nightingale.”

Samuel Goldwyn, according to Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #2 (Oct.-Nov. 2002) [I can’t find any independent confirmation that he ever said it but if not he missed an opportunity… to crib from Peter Pan creator James M. Barrie, who said: “I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.” (See https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/james_m_barrie_131580)]

“If you can be summed up in a paragraph, there’s something wrong with you.”

Victoria Coren in The London Observer quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 21, 2005