If you enjoy a lively, controversial, definitely counter-consensus take on all kinds of issues, check out Rex Murphy’s new “RexTV” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygLRdUzljg
In my latest National Post column I say Banksy bagging $16 million for a “subversive” painting of the British parliament as a bunch of chimpanzees shows the debased state of our culture that helps explain the debased state of our politics.
"the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”
T.S. Eliot quoted in Daniel Boorstin The Genius of American Politics
“for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects.“
The Tisroc in C.S. Lewis A Horse and His Boy
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html)
“Some surviving literary works from this period [Egypt’s First Intermediate Period 2200-2050 BC] betray blank despair; others proclaim a crass hedonism; and still others seek a basis for restoration of social order by insisting upon the necessity of personal righteousness.”
William McNeill The Rise of the West
"To predict the broad developments of the future is no more of a tour de force than to divine those of the past.... If past events have left their traces, it is reasonable to imagine that those still to come have their roots."
Honoré de Balzac, quoted in Leonard Silk The Economists
“Unfortunately, Miss [Susan] Sontag’s intelligence is still greater than her talent."
Gore Vidal "in a 1967 review of Death Kit, one of her largely forgotten novels" according to Ottawa Citizen December 29, 2004