“Social questions are the vital questions of today; they take the place of religion.”

Beatrice Webb in her diary in 1884, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb The De-moralization of Society

“that was like trying to teach a goldfish how to play basketball over the phone.”

Somebody posting as “TouchOGray” June 25 2008 (in an online thread about whether it’s OK to leave a bicycle in an unheated shed for the winter)

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Archilochus, a 7th century BC Greek poet, quoted by Paul P. Streeton in Gerald M. Meier and Dudley Seers Pioneers in Development

“One lesson and one lesson only, history may be said to repeat with distinctness [and that is] that the world is build somehow on moral foundations.“

“19th-century historian J.A. Froude” quoted by Pat Buchanan and J. Gordon Muir in R. Emmett, Tyrrell Jr., ed. Orthodoxy: The American Spectator Anniversary Anthology

“Any transaction freely entered into must benefit both parties. Any transaction that does not would surely be rejected by the party whom it disadvantages.”

Mike Harris and Preston Manning, Building Prosperity in a Canada Strong and Free

“Many have been the wise speeches of fools, though not so many as the foolish speeches of wise men.”

Thomas Fuller (1608-61) quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 29, 2000

“Those who maintain that, provided he is good, a man is happy on the rack or surrounded by great disasters, is talking nonsense, whether intentionally or not.”

Aristotle, Ethics

“We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behaviour. And it would seem, at first sight, very sensible to stop before we got there, and just carry on with those parts of morality that all sensible people agree about. But can we?”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity