“the great and awful book of human folly, which yet remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he would write in five hundred volumes!”

1841 Preface to Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“Economists... conducted an experiment at a poor, minority school district near Chicago where they randomly assigned some teachers to receive end-of-year bonuses based on student improvement, while other teachers received upfront bonuses that could be revoked at the end of the year if student improvement was below average.... the only difference was the timing of the bonus. There were ‘large and statistically significant gains’ on math test scores when bonuses were paid upfront, but not when bonuses were paid at the end of the year.... the prospect of having to give back money they had already received was more motivating for teachers than the prospect of getting money.”

The Boston Globe, reprinted in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail August 7, 2012

“the road to hell may just as well be paved with no intentions as with the proverbial good ones.”

“Preface to Part Two: Imperialism” in Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (specifically regarding the claim that the British Empire was acquired absent-mindedly).

“She didn’t wait for her ship to come in, she swam out to it.”

Letter from Maymar Gemmell in Maclean’s March 18, 1996 regarding the recently deceased Barbara Hamilton

“If chemicals had power of choice, it would be impossible to be certain that a chemical experiment would come off. If an acid ever prayed not to be led into temptation, chemistry would not be an exact science.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 19, 1913 quoted in Gilbert Magazine 9-10/08

“He was not only a bore, he bored for England.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted by Ian Hunter in National Post August 11, 2003 (it was during the Suez Crisis and, Hunter adds, “This article pretty much finished Eden’s political career. Earlier, he had similarly dispatched U.S. Foreign Secretary John Foster Dulles: ‘Dull. Duller. Dulles.’”)

“One of the most enduring truths is that man is a verb; but what human beings can do remains astonishing and frightening.”

Michael Young in National Review Dec. 5, 1994

“It was perhaps never so necessary as now that we should know why the arts are important and avoid inadequate answers. It will probably become increasingly more important in the future. Remarks such as these, it is true, are often uttered by enthusiastic persons, and are apt to be greeted with the same smile as the assertion that the future of England is bound up with Hunting.”

I.A. Richards Principles of Literary Criticism (and written in 1924, as if to prove his point)