“When you do policy, you have to allow for people.”
“David Rose, a research adviser at the Bank of Canada” quoted in Maclean’s October 23, 1995 (both Rose and Maclean's evidently considered it a revolutionary insight in economics).
“There is no limit to the amount of nonsense one can produce if you think too long alone.”
Jacob Viner, quoted by Bernard J. Shapiro, Principal, McGill University, to the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, May 22, 1997, in Canadian Speeches Vol. XI, #4 (July/August 1997)
“Rome is burning, Mr. Minister. Could we at least hear a sympathetic tune on the fiddle?”
A Financial Post editorial involving a forgotten B.C. minister and a forgotten issue, quoted in British Columbia Report November 10, 1997
“The amusements of mankind, at least of the English part of mankind, teach the same lesson. Our shooting, our hunting, our traveling, our climbing have become laborious pursuits. It is a common saying abroad that ‘an Englishman’s notion of a holiday is a fatiguing journey’…”
Walter Bagehot Physics and Politics [the “lesson” being about our inherited, possibly excessive predisposition to action]
“Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.”
Karl Barth, Christliche Gemeinde quoted in Mackenzie Institute Newsletter July 2002
“The alternative to perfection of self is perfection of others: Either I will concentrate on me and my welfare or on others and their welfare; in other words, mind my own business or mind other people’s business.”
Leonard Read Let Freedom Reign
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say one major reason the US Presidential race is closer than you might expect is that most of the unrest over race and police misconduct is in cities controlled by the Democrats, in states controlled by the Democrats, suggesting their approach to social harmony is not working.