“Returning to the problem he identified in The Abolition of Man and De Descriptione Temporum, in the great change from one culture to another, Lewis [in The Discarded Image ] suggested that something has been lost. Even as Plato and Aristotle once governed the direction of science, new philosophes of science govern the direction and application of science until ‘now, in some extreme forms of Behaviorism, the subject himself is discounted as merely subjective; we only think that we think. Having eaten up everything else, he eats himself up too. And where we “go from that” is a dark question.’”

Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis

“Academics mock introductory ‘History 200’ courses that take students ‘from Plato to NATO’ over the course of an academic year, but the alternative to students you know about Plato and NATO is not students who read Gibbon or von Ranke, and Plato and NATO are things everyone should know about, so there is a case for covering the basics.”

Mark F. Proudman in Dorchester Review #34 (Vol. 15, #4) Winter 2025

“Over the years, I’ve had dealings with many universities around the world. I’ve funded research centres, chairs and programs related to entrepreneurship, business management, engineering and technological innovation. I’ve also served on a number of university boards and given guest lectures on campuses in Canada, the United States and Europe. But until recently, it never occurred to me to consider the overriding purpose of a university. In conceiving and drafting the framework of an ideal society, universities should look at all aspects — everything from the arts and sports to business and medicine. They should also consider the ideal structure of government — one that ensures individual liberty and places certain checks on the power of elected officials. One of the ways we currently do that is through our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But what about other rights, including, most importantly, economic rights? Why has no society ever enshrined an economic charter of rights, and what should those rights be? One thing is clear: democratic charters of rights need to be fortified with economic rights, because if a society’s economy is weak, then everything within society will suffer. If citizens can’t feed themselves or don’t have access to medical care because the economy has collapsed, then all the best government programs and philosophies don’t mean much.”

Frank Stronach in National Post May 14, 2024 [but it is surely extraordinary that he does not know Magna Carta does enshrine economic rights including to property or that the U.S. Constitution does].

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

“William Blake, 1757-1827” quoted in Gravitas Vol. I #2 (Summer 1994) without further attribution.

“One of the reasons most people don’t do well in life is because success is usually disguised behind hard work.”

Anthony Robbins Unlimited Power

“‘Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labour’: these were Christian through and through. Nietzsche did not mean this is a compliment. It was not just as frauds that he despised those who clung to Christian morality, even as their knives were dripping with the blood of God; he loathed them as well for believing in it. Concern for the lowly and the suffering, far from serving the cause of justice, was a form of poison. Nietzsche, more radically than many a theologian, had penetrated to the heart of everything that was most shocking about the Christian faith.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World [though I have come to believe that Holland, like nearly everyone, misreads Nietzsche as celebrating what he was in fact trying desperately to warn about].

“The first time a lawyer was present when someone spilled lighter fluid all over themselves and then lit a match to inspect the stain, we as a species were doomed.”

Shannon McKinnon in Ottawa Citizen May 22, 1999

“If it arises as a problem, your mind will fight it off, because no one really wants or enjoys problems; but if it arises as a solution, a spurious solution, of course, then you will not fight it off because it has a high utility value; it is something you need and you have conjured it up to fill this need. There exists very little likelihood that you will travel in a loop between your parked car and your bedroom for the rest of your life, but there is a very great possibility that if you are tormented by guilt and pain and self-doubt – and vast floods of self-accusation that hit every day without fail – that a fixed idea will, once it is happened upon, remain.”

Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer