“Modern men are less anxious to be men than to be moderns.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly December 26, 1935, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
This line has been widely attributed in various forms (including being emailed to me as from John Wayne as “Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”) However the Quote Investigator says, credibly (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/16/hard-life/) that it originated with a character named Jackie Brown who gets guns for fellow criminals in the 1971 novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins.
“An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary – however absurd – to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life.”
Algernon Blackwood in “The Willows” in Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
In my latest Epoch Times column I talk about the contrast between the “modern”, aka Westernized, world and much of the planet, with the specific example of what it was like inside and outside the conference centre at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (There’s also a video on the same theme.)
In my latest National Post column I argue that various embarrassing missteps by Canadian educational institutions, among others, show that the woke aren’t just nasty, they’re so narrow-minded they really don’t know anyone with a brain or a heart disagrees with them, let alone why.
“Let the common man bend more of his attention, more at least than he is doing at present, to the preservation of some permanent reason for living, some permanent thing worth fighting for. Let him take care of his philosophy, and his civilization will take care of itself.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News August 4, 2006, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook
“What we require is the expansion of education, until it includes much older and wiser things.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Nov. 6, 1920, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
“there is even a rather delightful publication for children called The Punctuation Repair Kit, which takes the line ‘Hey! It’s uncool to be stupid!’ – which is a lie, of course, but you have to admire them for trying.”
Lynn Truss Eats, Shoots & Leaves