"always brilliant, sometimes intelligent"
Robert Bourassa's frequently stated verdict on Bernard Landry, quoted by Paul Wells in National Post November 29, 2000
“How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God. Only a godless ideology could plan and carry out the extermination of a whole people."
John Paul II at Yad Vashem, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things October 2000
"Unpleasantries exchanged"
TSN announcer regarding a little shoving match (no fight resulted) in Toronto Maple Leafs - Minnesota North Stars game November 1, 1993
In lecturing to R.A.F. members during World War II “It seemed to me that they did not really believe that we have any reliable knowledge of historic man. But this was often curiously combined with a conviction that we knew a great deal about prehistoric man: doubtless because prehistoric man is labeled ‘science’ (which is reliable) whereas Napoleon or Julius Caesar is labeled as ‘history’ (which is not). Thus a pseudoscientific picture of the ‘caveman’ and a picture of ‘the present’ filled almost the whole of their imaginations; between these, there lay only a shadowy and unimportant region in which the phantasmal shapes of Roman soldiers, stagecoaches, pirates, knights-in-armor, highwaymen, etc., moved in a mist. I had supposed that if my hearers disbelieved the Gospels, they would do so because the Gospels recorded miracles. But my impression is that they disbelieved them simply because they dealt with events that happened a long time ago: that they would be almost as incredulous of the battle of Actium as of the Resurrection – and for the same reason.”
C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle
"'popular economist’ is a contradiction in terms. Economics has never been – and perhaps never can be – popular because it is the study of what people actually do rather than what they profess to do or recommend that others do. It lays bare hypocrisy and dwells far too gloomily on the ‘unintended results’ to which so many fine-sounding policies fall prey."
Peter Foster in Financial Post May 2, 2006
"Knowledge leads either to reverence or arrogance."
"Anonymous”, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail December 6, 2006
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see."
Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in ”Social Studies" in Globe & Mail October 4, 2006
“The question which moral system was the best depends principally on the question whether the heathen philosophers or the Christian preachers were right in their estimate of the facts. To suppose that Christian morals can ever survive the downfall of the great Christian doctrine is as absurd as to suppose that a yearly tenant will feel towards his property like a tenant in fee simple.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, “Note on Utilitarianism” postscript to Stephen's book Liberty Equality Fraternity