“But talk isn’t action; it’s just loud breathing.”
Editorial in Ottawa Citizen December 9, 1999 [if I wrote it I have since forgotten]
“Every day as I do the liturgy of the hours in the morning as well as throughout the day, I am exercising my acceptance of God’s will, whatever it may be, and to strive to go where I hope he’s leading.”
John Walker in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“She means well, but she doesn’t mean much.”
“CAN’T FIND WHO SAID IT FIRST” quoted in “Other Suspects – V” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“Inevitably, if death is to be conquered, and if humanity is defined by its mortality, then humanity must go. This isn’t an extrapolation; he admits as much that man is a ‘temporary stage along the evolutionary pathway.’ Just like Mr. Shaw, transhumanists would ‘throw over humanity with all its limitations’ rather than discard their own philosophy. They are loyal to their own philosophy, not to our shared humanity. And just when we realize where their loyalties lie, More contradicts these very loyalties with an ironic admission: ‘There can be no final, ultimate, correct philosophy of life.’ It is a line so perfectly self-refuting that we need only quote it and smile.”
Brady Stiller reviewing Max More’s essay “Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)
“Our image of ourselves as a people was lifted up into heroism by our honourable and solitary defiance of Hitler in 1940, and we liked to see ourselves as the inheritors of Henry V and the imitators of the Greeks and Romans. Of course, these ideas had been quietly subverted for years by the Left, and were secretly despised by a small but influential part of the educated middle class. George Orwell had rightly pointed out in the early months of the war that Britain was unique in having an intelligentsia that despised patriotism. That current in national thought had been suppressed by many things: Russia's entry into the war had allowed even the extreme Left to appear patriotic; the discovery of the extermination camps had transformed a defensive ‘imperialist’ war into a Just War, if only with hindsight; and the powerful myth that the Tories had all been appeasers, whilst the Left had been keen to fight the Nazis (though largely false), had allowed the intellectuals to claim the war as their own. The Suez catastrophe and humiliation, imperial withdrawal from Asia and Africa, and the simple passage of time eventually permitted open mockery of the war years to emerge, round about the time of Churchill's death.”
Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Britain [from my “revolt of the elites” file].
“Come join the party”
Slogan that came to me regarding the need to be cheerful in policy polemics and struggles during a conversation June 25, 2025.
“Fools can be found to support anything…”
Theodore Dalrymple in National Review November 20, 2006 [specifically re people who call the niqab liberating for women].
“Leisure is not in any way identical with liberty. My dog has any amount of leisure. In fact, he has nothing else. But for all that he has no liberty.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 14, 1923, in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #1 (September 2000)