“One of the most eerie phenomena of our era, Eric Hobsbawm states in his masterful history Age of Extremes; The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, is the ‘destruction of the past.’ Most young people, he argues, now ‘grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in.’”

Sean Mills in The Beaver April-May 2005

“The study of history brings to youth the experience that is lacking to it; it can help the adolescent to overcome his most usual temptation: to be exclusive, to condemn in advance some particular tendency, person, or group; to have a vision of the universe limited only to his own vision (and if only this were a matter merely of adolescents!). At the age when it is important to confront the values received – those of his surroundings, childhood, family, or social milieu – with his own personality, the study of history would enlarge the field of this investigation… By familiarizing oneself with other times, other eras, other civilizations, one acquires the habit of distrusting criteria of one’s own time…”

Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle AgesPernoud TMA p. 170.

"Knowledge leads either to reverence or arrogance."

"Anonymous”, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail December 6, 2006

"When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you."

Irving Layton, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail August 8, 2001

"Every family should have at least three children. Then, if one is a genius, the other two can support him."

George Coote, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail May 10, 2001.

"A wise man hears one word and understands two."

"a Yiddish proverb" quoted in BC Report December 28, 1998

"One science only will one genius fit/ So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

Alexander Pope, quoted in Marshall McLuhan The Gutenberg Galaxy