Having been called an Optimist in his youth because of his opposition to fashionable youth pessimism “after naturally enjoying the daylight, I came to be troubled with the twilight…. All that there is, in substance, on the other side, is a row of official optimists, boasting of the liberties they have not got, and defending the religion they do not believe.”

G.K. Chesterton somewhere in G.K’s Weekly Vol. 22 (3/10/35 to 12/3/36) quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #3 (Jan./Feb. 2025)

“It may be a strange sight to see the blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger. England shows us the blind leading the people who can see. And this again is an under-statement of the case.”

G.K. Chesterton in “A Glimpse of my Country” in Tremendous Trifles, quoted in “The Golden Key Chain GKC on Scripture Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert: the Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #4 (March/April 2025)

In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian state has become so profoundly incapable that when politicians and bureaucrats don’t do something they claimed they were going to, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether they didn’t want to, couldn’t, or both.

“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.”

“Doug Larson (English middle-distance runner who won gold medals at the 1924 Olympic Games)”, emailed without further attribution by a friend

“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.”

Charles Evans Hughes, as header quotation on Frontier Centre Weekly E-newsletter Update June 18, 2025 [https://mailchi.mp/fcpp/foreign-affairs-economy-education-military-leaders-on-the-frontier].

“The system is broken, and once these judges get into their position, they have this sense of entitlement.... Last time I checked, there hasn’t been any judges elected. Maybe that’s the problem. We should do what the U.S. does. Let’s start electing our judges, holding them accountable.”

Doug Ford in a rare moment of lucidity, quoted in National Post April 30, 2025

“being idiotic is, alas, a human right as well.”

Barbara Amiel in Ottawa Citizen April 25, 1998

“Sing while you fight”

Me on the desirability of being a happy warrior in public policy, both for tactical reasons and because life is both too short and too marvelous an adventure to go around being sour about its difficulties, June 25, 2025