“The decay of academia: from Sis Boombah to Trans Boombah in 3 generations.”
Another of mine, from October 14, 2023.
“What is the good of words if they aren’t important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn’t any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn’t there be a quarrel about a word? If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning by moving your ears?”
G.K. Chesterton “The Peacemaker” in The Ball and the Cross, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
In my latest National Post column I say historical amnesia seems to be Canada’s new national policy and slogan, driven by politicians who know they cannot withstand comparison with figures from the past.
“If the eighteenth century claimed to be the Age of Reason, nobody can deny the claim of the twentieth century to be the Age of Unreason.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly, Nov. 1, 1930, as header quotation on Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“Man is governed not only by what he thinks but by what he chooses to think about.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 11, 1912, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008).
“There is a kind of work which any man can do, but from which many men shrink, generally because it is very hard work, sometimes because they fear it will lead them whither they do not wish to go. It is called thinking.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 10, 1915, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)
“Some natural selection buffs claim that the human mind is just a meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind. Hold on a moment. If it were, then there would be no reason for confidence in any conclusion of reasoning whatsoever – including the conclusion that our minds are a meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“Doing things and denouncing things are both quite easy, as compared with thinking about them.”
G.K. Chesterton, “On Keeping Your Hair On,” in Sidelights, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #5 (March 2006)