“Experience teaches us that nothing stands so much in the way of developing great philosophers as the custom of supporting mediocre ones in state universities…. No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer… The state is always afraid of them.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator” quoted in Will Durant The Story of Philosophy

“When you worry, you go over the same ground endlessly and come out the same place you started. Thinking makes progress from one place to another; worry remains static. The problem of life is to change worry into thinking and anxiety into creative action.”

Harold B. Walker, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail December 8, 2009

“The reply of the Spartan father, who said to his son, when complaining that his sword was too short, ‘Add a step to it,’ is applicable to everything in life.”

Samuel Smiles Self-Help

“We believe that the sun is in the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else.”

C.S. Lewis Miracles (having conceded the enormous difficulty of evaluating directly whether the Incarnation happened or not).

“He wore… clothes that looked like what starts fires in old warehouses.”

Spider Robinson Time Travellers Strictly Cash

“How can these people strike dignified attitudes, and pretend that things really matter, when the total ludicrousness of life is proved by the very method by which it is supported? A man strikes the lyre, and says, ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’ and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a hole in his head.”

The king in G.K. Chesterton The Napoleon of Notting Hill

“Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.”

Julian Barnes, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail March 21, 2002

“If we really do discount time positively, why does anyone ever eat their cake then their icing?”

OK, this one’s me again, from April 5, 2002, and possibly only interesting to economists.