“It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word. The Crusade without the Cross is a dead word.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 12, 1924, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol 10 #5 (March 2007)
He had not “acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him to believe what he wished without evidence”.
Thomas Robert Malthus, quoted by Antony Flew, ed., in the introduction to An Essay on the Principle of Population and A Summary view of the Principle of Population
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Riddle of the Ivy” in Tremendous Trifles, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 No. 4 (Jan/Feb. 2000)
“The view that human beings are by nature good and reasonable creatures who can compose their differences peacefully is incompatible with what we know of human behavior in recorded history. It is starkly utopian.... Order can exist without justice and freedom, as we well know, but justice and freedom cannot exist without order.”
Sidney Hook in American Spectator July 1988
“We do not claim that every normal individual always knows his or her own best interests but that no one else is likely to know them better. That is what Aristotle meant when he wrote that the wearer of shoes knows better than the cobbler whether a shoe pinches.”
William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy
“But despite the current, almost mystical belief in communication-as-problem-solving – talk doesn’t always help.”
Lillian Breslow Rubin Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family
“I definitely am going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”
“Louis Boone (1914-65), American critic” quoted in Cy Charney The Salesperson’s Handbook
“You should never try to teach a pig to sing: it can’t be done, and it annoys the pig.”
Letter from Matthew Horan of Fort Smith, Arkansas in National Review Dec. 30, 1991, quoting the opinion of H. Franklin Waters, Chief Judge of the Western District of Arkansas in Robertson v White, 633 F. Supp. 954, 959 (W.D. Ark 1986). [How’s that for a detailed, even pedantic reference?]