“’People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which once it possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations; but do not tell them to be romantic, and then solace them with glory; do not attempt by philosophy what was once done by religion. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible.’”

John Henry Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room” (1841) quoted in Russell Kirk The Conservative Mind

In my latest National Post column I pick up on the Post’s fall series “A Serious Canada” to lament just how unserious a look at a typical newspaper front page reveals us to be on everything from Chinese Communist aggression to budgeting to open government.

“If a rule of the form ‘he who takes the benefit must pay the cost’ is at stake, then solving the problem means spotting cheats. People do this well. The mind is not following abstract reason; it is enforcing a social contract.... Given this view of man – a natural trader, ever concerned with social debts and an uncertain future – it is little wonder that human minds are interested in detecting cheats, not pursuing pure logic, and in sampling frequencies rather than making risky one-off guesses.”

The Economist July 4, 1992 [an article on so-called "Wason tests" some of which people solve far better than others though they are logically equivalent]

“I am not certain that brevity is the soul of wit, but brevity is an excellent substitute for wit.”

G.K. Chesterton in New York Times April 10, 1921, quoted in Gilbert! magazine vol. 5 # 3 (Dec. 2001)

“’If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the Earth.”

“A.P. Herbert (1890-1971), English humorist and politician” quoted as “Thought du jour in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Oct. 10, 2011

“Don’t seek out the article ... I am assured that it is well worth the effort in avoiding!”

“A correspondent” quoted by a friend in an email

“’I suppose there are two views about everything,’ said Mark. ‘Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.’”

Mark Studdock and William “Bill the Blizzard” Hingest in C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength

“After my warning order to the company that we would be moving off in a couple of hours I said that I was going to the communion service first. I set off by myself. Half-way there, I looked back to see if anyone else was coming and found to my surprise that virtually the whole company was following me in single file.”

My high school English teacher Stewart Bull, then a major and company commander with the Essex Scottish in Normandy in July 1944 (from his unpublished memoir Happy Warrior: Adventures in the Classroom).