In my latest National Post column I challenge those prone to declaring policy debates “settled” to tell us on which subjects, if any, an intelligent, decent person might have a different view from theirs.
“The most basic form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7517225-the-most-basic-form-of-human-stupidity-is-forgetting-what) {BTW I have found this in various forms including “common” rather than “basic” - it’s apparently from Human, All Too Human but I couldn’t track down the German original]
“In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk…”
Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution
Jim Hacker: “Was I good?” (about a TV interview) Sir Humphrey Appleby: “A most remarkable performance.”
Yes Minister, “Big Brother” episode
In my latest National Post column I say art galleries should not hide paintings after some Muslims call them blasphemous.
"If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb (the reference is not just or even primarily to romantic love but to fondness for all good things such as food, whiskey etc.)
“the acknowledged Elizabethan habit of viewing history as a series of object lessons for present conduct.”
Sylvan Barnet’s “Overview” in the 1986 Signet Classic edition of William Shakespeare Julius Caesar
“The river of human nonsense flows on forever.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Sermon on Inns,” in The Flying Inn, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #1 (September 2003)