On May 20 I discussed Israel, COVID, liberty and more with Richard Syrett on NewsTalk Sauga 960 AM.
“But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
The king of Brobdingnag in Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
“How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination. Once in a generation mayhap I do as I have done but now, and slay a score by torture.”
“She” (to the narrator) in H. Rider Haggard She
“He noticed that his human brothers lacked his discrimination of time and often were forced to wait faster than a Martian would…”
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“He looks like he swallowed a safe.”
An ESPN commentator on the St. John’s basketball team’s very solidly built guard Matt Brust, February 2, 1987
“It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task.”
Friedrich Hayek The Road to Serfdom
In my latest National Post column I once again use the front page of the newspaper to show the hazards, across a broad range of issues, of entrusting power to sanctimonious fools instead of competent well-rounded people with common sense.
“A man who shows no resentment at being slapped is overwhelmed with insults and forced into need.”
Blaise Pascal Pensées