“If you have to swallow a frog, it’s best not to look at it too long.”
Tennessee governor Ned McWherter quoted in The Economist April 6, 1991 [specifically urging the legislature to adopt a state income tax, which I’m against, but I applaud the maxim as a general rule]
“as difficult as leadership is, it is not complicated. In its simplest form, leadership is ‘accomplishing a task with the people and resources you have while maintaining the integrity of your institution.’”
Author’s “Introduction” to William H. McRaven The Wisdom of the Bullfrog
“There is, you know, such a thing as being too intellectual in your approach to a problem. He [Truman] believed that even a wrong decision was better than no decision at all.”
Clark Clifford, quoted in an article in The Economist August 1, 1992 [if it had a byline I did not record it; it was evidently something Clifford “then a bright young man” said later than his time in that administration].
In my latest Loonie Politics column I note the extraordinary contrast between England’s Bad King John, at a crisis in his reign, ordering books of theology in Latin for guidance and modern politicians I doubt even read trendy airport paperbacks on policy in English.
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.)
“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
In my latest Mercatornet column I say the election of Donald Trump has certainly had a depressing effect on the giant climate gabfest in Baku but far more as symptom than as cause.
“But leadership, no matter whether you are a midshipman or an admiral, is never easy. Even those who seemed carry the burden of leadership with ease often struggle. Carl von Clausewitz, the great nineteenth-century general who wrote the consummate book On War, once said that ‘everything in war is simple, but the simple things are difficult.’”
Author’s “Introduction” to William H. McRaven The Wisdom of the Bullfrog