"Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice. But one may forget that hasty intellectual judgments are equally deplorable."
Jacques Barzun From Dawn to Decadence
"Questionless, there is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue, and of this Economics is commonly esteemed not the least part…"
Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I p. 481.
In my latest National Post column I find some comfort in Hungary repatriating Roman-era silver.
"It is one of the deep jokes of existence that very wise people and very ignorant people frequently say the same thing; perhaps it is the basis of democracy."
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Feb. 23, 1907, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 10 #1 (September 2006)
"It is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people’s sins."
G.K. Chesterton, “The Midnight of Europe,” in The Crimes of England, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #2 (October-November 2003)
"'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (frequently misquoted or misattributed including to Mark Twain or F. Scott Fitzgerald according to www.sovereignman.com/offshore/slowly-at-first-then-all-at-once-12909, which warned that it applies to nations too)