"Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, and after twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England (regarding Ireland, and arguing that James II could have put the issue to rest by confirming current owners in their title while taxing them heavily enough to pay decent compensation to the dispossessed)

 "A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbours."

Andrei Sakharov, quoted in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

"The idea of liberty has ultimately a religious root; that is why men find it so easy to die for and so difficult to define. It refers finally to the fact that, while the oyster and the palm tree have to save their lives by law, man has to save his soul by choice."

G.K. Chesterton, “The Free Man,” in A Miscellany of Men, quoted in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 6 #3 (December 2002)

"No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it."

Theodore Roosevelt (when he was New York City Police Commissioner)

In its annual report Freedom House had rated 81 of the world’s countries as providing a high degree of individual liberty. "It is not an accident that a majority of the citizens in 74 of those countries are Christians."

Paul Marshall, a Canadian political scientist and senior fellow with the Centre for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., quoted in British Columbia Report April 5, 1999

In a Financial Post column today I say the Supreme Court's ruling in the "case of beer" a.k.a. R. v. Comeau is not only ill-timed and legally illogical, it's post-truth.