"We must understand the difference between fear societies and free societies, between dictators and democrats. We must understand the link between democracy and peace and between human rights and security. Above all, we must bring back moral clarity so that we may draw on the power of free individuals, free nations, and the free world for the enormous challenges ahead."
Natan Sharansky’s “Preface” in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy
"It’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope. Stop arguing and do as you’re told."
James Langton’s guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, in the Sunday Telegraph, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen Dec. 17 2000
"Symbolism and ritual keep things much simpler than they would otherwise be."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 14, 1906, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #3 (Dec. 2002).
“He [police lieutenant Rowcliffe] said he understood my position perfectly, and how about my getting wise to myself and spilling some beans? I was, I told him, fresh out of beans."
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue in Rex Stout The Silent Speaker
"I was honoured – incredibly honoured – to receive an award in [Pierre Berton’s] name. He understood that history is a narrative form, one that can be engaging and vivid. Pierre Berton showed me a Canada that was worthy of passion."
Will Ferguson in a Q&A in The Beaver Oct.-Nov. 2005, re having won the Pierre Berton award for popularizing Canadian history from the National History Society
"As one writer put it in the Wall St. Journal, when cowards ascend to positions of leadership, their character is revealed. They panic in a crisis. They don’t know what to do."
R. Cort Kirkwood in Ottawa Sun Dec. 20, 1998
"Amateurs practice until they can get it right; professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong."
"Anonymous", quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Dec. 27, 2004
"It will not do to offer democracy, secularism and licentious living as an alternative to religious extremism. The answer to bad religion is good religion — to put it more elegantly, theology is required to answer the false claims of unreasonable religious positions."
Fr. Raymond J. De Souza in National Post January 31, 2008 (after favourably quoting George Weigel's claim that "It is thus a great folly to think that jihadism and the terrorism it underwrites can be understood in terms drawn primarily from the patois of the therapeutic society, as if jihadist terrorism were some Levantine form of psychiatric aberration. Within their own theological frame of reference and the reading of history it warrants, jihadists are not crazy. They make, to themselves, a terrible kind of sense.")