“It was not the slavers who would end up settling Africa, and subjugating it to foreign rule, but – by an irony familiar from Christian history – the emancipators.”
Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
“Politics are now so corrupt that everything they touch is corrupted. We are long past the point of protecting our government from the degrading influences of trade or professionalism. If anything, we have to protect our trades and professions from the degrading influences of government.”
G.K. Chesterton in New Witness November 5, 1920, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #1 (September-October 2024) [and I need hardly add that we did not and it has therefore gotten far worse in the intervening century]
“If you love your job, you will never work another day in your life.”
Implausibly attributed to Confucius in “More Choice Quotes” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #7 (May 2002) [evidently a version has also been attributed to Mark Twain, rather less unbelievably: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/646569-find-a-job-you-enjoy-doing-and-you-will-never
In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the Temporary Foreign Worker program as a bizarre and disgraceful alliance of progressives and big business to exploit foreigners while wrecking our economy and society.
“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant.”
Raymond Hull’s introduction to Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle
“It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat
“SORRY ABOUT THE TRAFFIC / I HAVE TO GO TO WORK TO GET ON VIDEO CALLS”
Bumper sticker on car in front of me November 21, 2024
In my latest Loonie Politics column I lampoon the Procurement Ombud boast that in seeking value for money the Canadian government no longer seeks value for money… and add that it couldn’t if it tried. And while I’m at it I ridicule “Ombud” as a job title.