In my latest National Post column I say historical amnesia seems to be Canada’s new national policy and slogan, driven by politicians who know they cannot withstand comparison with figures from the past.
“What is the real corrective to the condition in which shocking things do not shock the earnest and ethical people who do them? And how can we make it clear to those who are so inconsistent as not to be wicked men that they are very consistently doing wicked things?”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 28, 1917, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“Well, I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.”
Casey Stengel according to Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #2 (Oct./Nov. 2001)
“‘Intense without being tense’ is a hitting motto I like to stress.”
Joe Torre in Joe Torre and Nolan Ryan Torre with Joel Cohen, Pitching and Hitting.
“it must be said that since the birth of the most famous of analysts, Prince Hamlet, analysis, as the supreme quality of a character, is never divorced from Hamletism. That is, an intellect that dominates everything is a source of softening of the will and indecisiveness in action. With Martov, who was a thinking apparatus par excellence, the centers of restraint were too strong to allow him the free and reckless acts of combat, the revolutionary feats that no longer demand the reason, but only the will.”
Nikolai N. Sukhanov The Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal record by N.N. Sukhanov
“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