“But blind stupidity is not one of the virtues…”
Dr. Bocker in John Wyndham The Kraken Wakes
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the death of Rex Murphy is a terrible loss especially because we have also lost the kind of place he held in our national life.
“It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.”
Joseph Conrad, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Oct. 19, 1999
“For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.”
“Larry Eisenberg (1919-), U.S. science-fiction writer” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail March 16, 2011
“Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it’s just a cosmic coincidence. For many TikTok users, the moon phase trend affirms that they did find their soulmates. TikTok users are comparing the moon phases of the days they were born to those of their significant others — if the phases fit together to make a perfect full moon, according to the trend, they’re soulmates. If there are gaps between the overlapped moons, the relationship is supposedly doomed to fail.”
NBC March 6, 2023 [and filed in my notes under “How we laugh at the superstitious past”]
“If the eighteenth century claimed to be the Age of Reason, nobody can deny the claim of the twentieth century to be the Age of Unreason.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly, Nov. 1, 1930, as header quotation on Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”
“Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English author” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Dec. 17, 2010
“One of them [a crook planning to rob a Vegas casino in the Donald Westlake novel What’s The Worst Thing That Could Happen?] says he has a lot of ideas, but Westlake writes: ‘A whole lot of ideas isn’t a plan.… Ideas without a plan is usually just enough boulders to get you into the deep part of the stream, and no way to get back.’”
George F. Will in National Post Dec. 5, 2001 [not clear if it’s his elision or Westlake’s]