“Great players may question one of their moves, but they never question themselves.”
Bruce Pandolfini in National Post April 24, 1999 [discussing chess]
“Ambrose Bierce wrote of an inventor who built a moon rocket. When he fired it up, it bored straight down into the earth. A while later he crawled up out of the hole, and triumphantly announced, ‘My invention has proved correct in all its details; the defects are merely basic and fundamental!’ … whereupon the investors rushed forward to press money on him for the next attempt.”
Spider Robinson in Globe & Mail April 27, 1999
“‘Like the land of the Brobdingnagians,’ said Turnbull, smiling. ‘Oh, Where is that?’ said MacIan. Turnbull said bitterly, ‘In a book,’ and the silence fell suddenly between them again.”
G.K. Chesterton The Ball and the Cross, as header quotation on David Beresford in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde in Lady Windemere's Fan [https://idiomorigins.org/origin/knows-the-price-of-everything-the-value-of-nothing and widely quoted online though often as “A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”]
“There’s an expression in chess: ‘Play the board, not the man.’ That’s not quite right. You want the bulk of your moves to be objective and analytical. But being good at chess also requires being good at reading people.”
Bruce Pandolfini in National Post April 24, 1999
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say ideas like digging a huge tunnel under the 401 to relieve traffic congestion by cramming in more cars, or more government funding for mortgages when houses are unaffordable, obtusely misses the point that if you let in half a million people a year you will overstrain everything from infrastructure to the housing industry to social cohesion.
“If you think wrong, you go wrong.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News September 12, 1914, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)
“the waters are always smoothest and even most polished when they pour over the precipice.”
G.K. Chesterton quoted by Dale Ahlquist in “Chesterton University” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022) [with particular reference to those topics on which polite society and the Establishment stifle debate]