"he [André Malraux] was fond of quoting Napoleon’s proclamation, 'My life is quite a novel.'" Algis Valiunas reviewing Olivier Todd’s Malraux: A Life in National Review July 4, 2005 - and I suppose a "pithy" quotation fails if it requires an extensive gloss, but I have to add my reaction on reading this line, namely that if you ever notice such a thing about your own life you need to consider urgently the question "Yes but by which author?"
"The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilized man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 18, 1906, reprinted in Gilbert! Vol. 3 #5 (March 2000)
"It is lack of confidence more than anything else that kills civilization." Sir Kenneth Clark, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Social Studies in Globe and Mail February 6, 2007
In my latest National Post column I urge social democrats to talk to real people about real things, and listen to them. Things like that government isn't working very well.
In my latest National Post column I ponder NDP MP Niki Ashton's contribution to the "revolt of the elites" against the elites on behalf of the elites.
In my latest National Post column I suggest that punk rockers and other postmoderns hate and love big government because we've done the Nietzche transvaluation thing. Choice doesn't mean deciding between existing alternatives including right and wrong anymore. Now it means dictating what alternatives should exist and deciding for ourselves what shall be right. Conformity can be rebellion, awful art can be great, big can be small, down can be up, anything we like. Or so we like to think.
"I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." Arthur Hays Sulzberger