In my latest Epoch Times column, a New Year’s look ahead, I said if we can’t get politicians to resolve to stop talking nonsense in 2026, we can at least determine that we ourselves won’t pretend they’re not… even if they’re on “our side”.
“‘It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent,’ but ‘shout and bellow with uplifted hand, pant, wag your head, smite your hands together, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience.’”
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“Erasure is as important as writing”
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ [with more on how to get rid of the junk]
In my latest Loonie Politics column I deplore the manner in which Liberal MPs, and even cabinet ministers, now simply cut and paste windy PMO banalities into their press releases word-for-word no longer even pretending to think for themselves about how to justify policy let alone about actual policy.
“Clearness is the first essential”.
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ [though entering it I would prefer “Clarity”]
“Clearness is the first essential”.
Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“Time is not the same for the speaker as for the audience. To the speaker it is too, too brief for what he has to say. For the audience it is a grim foretaste of eternity.”
Marshall McLuhan “‘Culture Without Literacy’/ Explorations 1, 1953”, quoted as X post from The McLuhan Institute March 11, 2025 [https://x.com/McLinstitute/status/1899494456417480991]
“‘ALL ART is propaganda’, wrote George Orwell in 1940, ‘but not all propaganda is art.’”
Start of “Six books you didn’t know were propaganda/ Governments influence a surprising amount of literature. Some of it pretty good” in The Economist Nov. 3, 2023 [https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/11/03/six-books-you-didnt-know-were-propaganda with no byline]