“No wise man will wish to bring more long words into the world.”
G.K. Chesterton “The War of the Gods and Demons” in The Everlasting Man quoted in “Everlasting” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #4 (March/April 2024)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I point out that Mark Carney’s slick verbiage is stunningly unreliable, not because he lies on purpose but because his colossal Donald-Trump-like self-regard bends reality for him in real time in very Trumpian fashion.
“To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non controversial sauces, is a waste of time.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
“ONE CAN LACK any of the qualities of an organizer – with one exception – and still be accepted and successful. That exception is the art of communication. It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals [start of chapter “Communication”].
In my latest Loonie Politics column I denounce the Canadian habit of putting up with meaningless rhetoric from politicians with nonsensical jobs.
“Such, in brief, is the Platonic doctrine of Forms or Ideas, but this summary can give no impression of the depths and riches of Plato’s thought and in particular takes no account of another and a very important aspect in which an emotional, one had almost said a mystical, value is found in the striving of the human soul towards an attainment of the perfection seen in the Form, such as that of Beauty.”
David Knowles The Evolution of Medieval Thought [and by no means his only use of the surely peak-pomposity phrase “one had almost said”]
“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)
“To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week’s events, it is time for the ‘unthinkable.’ (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone ‘entirely as we had hoped.’)”
Conrad Black in National Post June 28, 2025 [re Gaza and Iran]