“Without freedom of speech, we would not know who the idiots are.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend May 28, 2024
“The modern laxity of language has had a great deal to do with the ultimate laxity of conduct.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly July 4, 1931 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.”
Joe Sobran quoted “In the last issue of Gilbert” by David Deavel, according to Pamela Patnode “The Art of Language” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2023); she added “The observation rings true today, and it has scriptural significance.”
“Think enough and you won’t know anything.”
Kenneth Patchen, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
“I was an insatiable book reader from the age of five. The list below of some of my favourites as a teenager may give the impression that I’m showing off, but I’m not: it is quite honest. History of England by Macaulay, Essays by Francis Bacon, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Vanity Fair by Thackeray, Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Poems by John Keats, Paradise Lost by John Milton, the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, and the novels and stories of Rudyard Kipling. Thank you for reminding me of those wonderful days when I read so many exciting things the first time period./ Sincerely, Rex Stout.”
Nero Wolfe creator Rex Stout in response to the school newspaper of Junior High School 115 in New York City asking him in 1967 “Which book or books were your favourites as a teenager and why?” [in a note at the end of Rex Stout Three Witnesses]
“If you know too much, you cannot move.”
A Korean proverb according to someone called Kee though the rest of my bibliographic note to self is incomprehensible.
“Go back to the idea of government by ideas.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Revolt Against Ideas,” in The Thing, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #6 (4-5/07)
This Thursday I told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research (SRSR to insiders) to avoid getting distracted by issues like refining the criteria for federal funding of advanced research and instead to focus their limited resources including of time on core government responsibilities such as defence, infrastructure and justice that appear to be crumbling. Ironically my initial in-person appearance on Tuesday collapsed because they couldn’t make the translation work, which I thought rather proved my point about the state being overextended and lacking some fairly basic capacities. I think the concept of government doing less baffled many of the MPs. But you can watch my testimony given Thursday via videoconference starting at timecode 16:11:33 and judge for yourselves.