"History is boring only if people are boring. History isn’t relevant only if, living your own life, you don’t care how other people lived theirs."

William Watson in Ottawa Citizen July 11, 1998

"The two most important questions in any economic analysis are: (1) What is the alternative? and (2) What happens then, and then, and then?"

Robert Higgs “Allocation of Risks Associated with Medical Goods: Government Regulation versus Market Process”

"I would not want to make you unhappy by detailing pain, but there is a crucial sort of difference between pain and the narration of pain. I am telling you what happened. If there is vicarious pain in knowing, there is actual peril in not knowing. In aversion lies a colossal risk."

Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him."

Yogi Berra, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 4 (Jan./Feb. 2001)

"Vestigial remains of that Victorianism are everywhere around us. And memories of them persist even when the realities are gone, rather like an amputated limb that still seems to throb when the weather is bad. The sense of values lost may be as palpable as the values we do have."

Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-moralization of Society

"Now there is an invitation that will NOT cause a stampede."

The cat in Red Dwarf, responding to Dave Lister's alarmed "Hey guys, look at me body", quoted on www.shortlist.com/entertainment/tv/50-best-quotes-from-red-dwarf#gallery-14

"All our doing must take place within the context of Being, with its mystery present and alive to us. Otherwise we are simply scurrying around aimlessly in the mazes of our own contrivance."

William Barrett The Illusion of Technique

"as trade guru Sylvia Ostry always says, given a choice between conspiracy and cock-up, bet on cock-up every time."

William Watson in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 19 2004