"I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as part of a generation who were taught the minutiae of 'social history.' There was no wider context to put it in, no framework, no sense of a larger, grander picture. It was plodding and confusing and mind-numbingly dull. It was after I left school that I became interested in history as it is meant to be taught – as a story, as conflict and character, as cause and effect. My approach comes from my own 're-discovery' of Canadian history."

Will Ferguson in a Q&A in The Beaver October-November 2005

"As a profession, we have made a mess of things. It seems to me that this failure of economics to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with our general propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences, an attempt which in our field may lead to serious error…. If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire that full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible."

Friedrich Hayek in his Nobel Prize in Economics acceptance speech, quoted in Brian Lee Crowley Crowley The Road to Equity

"As we want a person to play for pleasure, we want him to think for pleasure."

G. K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Feb. 18 1928, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 16 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2013) p. 44.

"Trying to understand the nature of man without recognizing him as the imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving of a lion."

J. Budziszewski in First Things June-July 2002

"The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved."

Russell Lynes, in "Thought du jour" in Globe and Mail July 26, 2001

"Of what use is a dream if not a blueprint for bold action?"

Bruce Wayne in the original 1966 Batman movie

"newspapers are fond of referring to the ‘dust-bin of history,’ a notion they borrow not from Karl Marx, as they think, but from an English writer and member of Parliament, August Birrell. On inspection the bin is much less full than is commonly believed. The repeats and returns in the last five centuries have been frequent."

Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence

"When the economic chickens come home to roost, they tend to arrive in flocks."

Editorial in National Post August 12, 2015