"Hagar: 'Never judge another man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes!' Lucky Eddie: 'But before you do, make sure he doesn’t have athlete’s foot!'"
Hagar the Horrible in Ottawa Citizen March 23, 2004
"A man lives by believing in something, not by debating and arguing about many things."
Thomas Carlyle
"To Keynes’s famous dictum - 'in the long run we are all dead' - the historian is committed by profession flatly to reply ‘Nonsense! the long run is with us, a powerful active force every day of our lives."
Walt Rostow The Process of Economic Growth
"Complexity is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
John Gross of the New York Times, quoted by John O'Sullivan in National Review December 25, 1995 (with specific reference to inherent tendency of bad theories to be complex)
"Man sets self ablaze using chainsaw to open gas tank"
Headline in Ottawa Citizen April 20, 2006 (from my "It didn't even seem like a good idea at the time" file)
"Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not lie ready to their hand, they will make them. It is not those who have enjoyed the advantages of colleges, museums, and public galleries, that have accomplished the most for science and art; nor have the greatest mechanics and inventors been trained in mechanics’ institutes. Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty."
Samuel Smiles Self-Help p. 82.
"Take away religion and we are truly reduced to the condition of talking animals…"
David Warren, “Sunday Spectator,” in Ottawa Citizen May 15, 2005
"It’s my job to see that the chips stay up."
Bernard Woolley in "Yes Minister" when asked by Hacker whose side he would be on when the chips were down