“Spouses stay with their mates with Alzheimer’s, not because there is any hope for pay back or even appreciation, but because of a keen sense of duty, and so on.”

Amitai Etzioni, “Libertarian Follies,” World and I, May 1995

In my latest Epoch Times column I use Neil Winokur’s book The Grumpy Accountant to lament that Canada’s tax system has been outrageously and needlessly complicated and harsh for many decades. Why do we let them do it to us?

“‘The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,’ wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, ‘we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.’”

David Frum Dead Right

“Surely what matters in a dogma – religious, political or any other kind – is not the motive of those who advance it, but whether it is true or false.”

Ted and Virginia Byfield in “Orthodoxy” in British Columbia Report August 18, 1997

“Saying the problem with a major government intervention wasn’t socialism but bad pricing decisions is like saying the Hindenburg was a success except for the fire.”

Here I quote myself from June 3, 2002 in reaction to former Energy Minister Marc Lalonde making some such excuse about the National Energy Program

In my latest National Post column I say nobody won the election and things won’t improve until the parties admit it and accept their share of the blame.

“there is an immense amount of pleasure to be derived from the sense of private ownership. It is surely no accident that every man has affection for himself: nature meant this to be so. Selfishness is condemned, and justly, but selfishness is not simply to be fond of oneself, but to be excessively fond.”

Aristotle The Politics.

“It is better to be defeated than to confess defeat in advance.”

William Jennings Bryan in a letter to his brother Charles in 1920, quoted in Robert W. Cherny, A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan