“Tourism was the source of history’s original failure of cultural understanding. Cyril Aldred writes that ancient Greek and Roman vacationers in Egypt ‘never really understood Egyptian religion and were inclined to see in inexplicable acts and beliefs a more profound significance than actually existed.’ Thus the concept of the ‘inscrutable Orient,’ the idea of the ‘mysterious East.’”
P.J. O’Rourke in The Atlantic Monthly September 2002
“Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one’s uniqueness, one falls in love with one’s complexity.”
John Fowles in Daniel Martin Chapter 2 according to en.wikiquote.org [a friend had cited a slightly different version from memory at a dinner].
“‘If he is dead to-day,’ he [Phocion to a tumultuous Athenian crowd following a rumour that Alexander the Great had died] said, ‘he will be so to-morrow and the day after to-morrow equally. So that there is no need to take counsel hastily or before it is safe.’”
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Plutarch’s Lives II
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the government’s inability to produce a COVID vaccine is just one sign of a plague of public sector ineptitude driven by ignorance of economics, utopian expectations and mental softness on our part as well as theirs that is far more dangerous than the coronavirus.
“But despite the current, almost mystical belief in communication-as-problem-solving – talk doesn’t always help.”
Lillian Breslow Rubin Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family
“I definitely am going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”
“Louis Boone (1914-65), American critic” quoted in Cy Charney The Salesperson’s Handbook
Christie Heffner “told the [Chicago] Sun-Times, ‘pornography is a word used by critics to demonize sexual images they don’t approve of.’ Failing to follow up properly, the reporters neglected to ask Ms. Hefner why she thinks ‘to demonize’ is a bad thing.”
Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 #8, July/August 2000
“Like a true philosopher, Flambeau had no aim in his holiday; but, like a true philosopher, he had an excuse. He had a sort of half purpose, which he took just so seriously that its success would crown the holiday, but just so lightly that its failure would not spoil it.”
G.K. Chesterton Favorite Father Brown Stories