“From his $1,200 haircuts to his personal war on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his 28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds of preposterous lawsuits exploiting infant cerebral palsy, [US Democratic Senator, presidential contender and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate, John] Edwards is living proof that history can play out as tragedy and farce simultaneously.”
Theo Caldwell in National Post December 27, 2007
Academia “is a place filled with generally quite well-meaning people, but on the whole not with brave people, not people who are willing to follow the truth wherever it leads”.
Paul Harper Scott, a music professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, “who resigned in protest at ‘dogmatic’ attitudes to decolonisation which could stop students learning Beethoven and Wagner” quoted in The Telegraph Sept. 18, 2021
“It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself.”
Nero Wolfe to the client in Rex Stout The Mother Hunt
“Make it happen. Greatness is not in where we stand but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But sail we must and not drift. Nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, a quotation that hockey player Sidney Crosby kept on his dresser according to Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition October 2005
“I am not severe – I am sweet by nature. But I defend the rigidity principle. God is stronger than human weakness and deviations. God will always have the last word.”
Pope John Paul II, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen April 3, 2005
“A contest of wills? Surely you’d be disqualified.”
Another of my “witticisms”, from August 20, 2015
“Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you.”
Jordan Peterson on Instagram Sept. 10, 2021
“Our greatest yet with least pretence,/ Great in council and great in war,/ Foremost captain of his time,/ Rich in saving common-sense,/ And, as the greatest only are,/ In his simplicity sublime.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”