“Where troops have encamped/ There will brambles grow;/ In the wake of a mighty army/ Bad harvests follow without fail.” Lao Tzu

“There is one striking feature about [General and future President Ulysses S.] Grant’s orders: no matter how hurriedly he may write them on the field, no one ever has the slightest doubt as to their meaning, or ever has to read them over a second time to understand them.”

“General Meade’s chief of staff” quoted by Horace Porter Campaigning with Grant

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Albert Einstein (“Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail February 9 2012)

“Some Catholic literature today practices a kind of doctrinal minimalism. Seeking to show how little one needs to believe, such apologetics gives the impression that belief is a burden rather than a privilege.” Avery Cardinal Dulles in First Things May 2004 (drawing on but not quoting Karl Barth)

“All over him like a cheap suit...” Play-by-play commentator on a Seattle-LA Clippers NBA game January 1, 1994 (I don’t know if it was original with him, but it’s where I first heard it)

“You might not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”

Jessica Mitford

“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.”

Arnold Toynbee, quoted by Mark Steyn in National Review July 18, 2005

“Bentley’s Second Law of Economics – the only thing more dangerous than an economist is an amateur economist.”

J. William Pfeiffer