“If human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practice cannibalism any more, but don’t even want to?”

George Orwell, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Feb. 27, 2002

In my latest National Post column I take aim at the political habit of constantly praising diversity in theory while consistently trying to squash it in practice, including in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“First catch your hare, said Mrs Beeton’s famous cooking instructions for the jugged variety.”

The Economist February 23, 1991

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Philip Marlowe’s internal monologue in Raymond Chandler The Long Goodbye

“And now, as we birds say, nests before eggs.”

The Raven in C.S. Lewis The Horse and His Boy

“the fastest execution since someone said, ‘This Guy Fawkes bloke, do we let him off, or what?’”

Edmund Blackadder in Black Adder Goes Forth, quoted in blackadderquotes.com/blackadder-series-4-episode-3-major-star-full-script

“‘It doesn’t really matter.’” “‘Here goes nothing.’” “‘It will be interesting to see what happens.’”

The three things the main character would say to himself, in that order, before paratroop-jumping during World War Two, in Sloan Wilson The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit