Speaking of the fatuous appeal of radicalism to the young “I must include myself, since I was a young Marxist.” But “What forced me to change my mind [away from radicalism] was discovering over the years that things were even worse than I thought. People did awful things, not just here but all around the world, not just now but across thousands of years of history…. History was especially disillusioning. It showed that some of my pet ideas had already been tried, and had blown up in people’s faces.”

Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional?

On The News Forum with Tanya Granic Allen we discussed the nature, purpose and tools of remembrance.

In my latest Epoch Times column I recall and honour all including those who vanished in the long, unending fight for liberty and decency.

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Jonathan Swift, as “Quote of the Week” in Watt’s Up With That “Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #488” January 24, 2022

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

Dorothy Parker, quoted by Earl in the cartoon Pickles in Ottawa Citizen February 16, 2009

“Any man with a large mind ought to be able to write about anything.”

G.K. Chesterton in “What Is Right With The World” quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 2022

“The best way to teach people critical thinking is to teach them to write. Because there’s no difference between that and thinking. One of the things that blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something. ‘Well, why are you writing?’ ‘Well, you need the grade.’ It’s like, no! You need to learn to think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake – and those could be battles for good things. If you can think, speak, and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that’s why you learn to write. And if you can formulate your arguments coherently, and make a presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal. People give you money; they give you opportunities; you have influence. That’s what you’re at university for. Be articulate. Because that’s the most dangerous thing, you can possibly be.”

Jordan Peterson “Mondays of Meaning” email December 6, 2021

“Of other Nobel Prize winners who make many grandiloquent statements on things they know nothing about, Stigler said that they ‘issue stern ultimata to the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis.’”

Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional?