“Miss Management”
A tag applied by MP Deb Grey to Minister Jane Stewart over the Human Resources Development Canada scandal , quoted by Susan Riley in Ottawa Citizen November 21, 2004
“Other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.”
Schopenhauer deploring the pursuit of fame in “Wisdom of Life,” quoted in Will Durant The Story of Philosophy
“Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds – some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians – may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.”
First sentence of Herodotus The Histories
“For the economist who drops homo economicus in favor of an open-ended utility function, no failure can be recognized. He cannot identify market failure, but neither can he identify government or political failure.”
James Buchanan, What Should Economists Do?
“He [the “mature man”] knows, with Carlyle, that there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help it, the sun will do even that...”
Will Durant The Story of Philosophy [part of Durant’s critique of Schopenhauer’s excessive gloominess]
“I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.”
Henry James, emailed by a friend and sourced to Henry James: A Life
“’Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?’ This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, ‘I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more like what the Christians say than what the materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I think them helpful.’ Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind…. Christianity is not a patent medicine.”
C.S. Lewis “Man or Rabbit?” in The Grand Miracle
“David Frost was expected to sink without a trace, but instead he rose without a trace.”
Kitty Muggeridge, quoted by William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review June 14, 1999