“The future is hidden even from the men who make it.”
Anatole France, quoted on https://www.hound-dog-media.com/2014/01/gamblers-fools-and-egotists-59-still_31.html
"The great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the ordinary and trite sophism of oppression."
Edmund Burke, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things February 2003 (crediting it to a letter from Nino Langiulli of Lynbrook, New York and calling it "an observation of the ever–quotable Edmund Burke with which I was not familiar").
“Frederick Myers describes a conversation with her [George Eliot] in which, ‘taking as her text the words God, Immortality, Duty, she pronounced, with a terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how incredible the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third’…. It is quite normal now for people to go through life without an ultimate object, but to the Victorians it was new and daunting. No wonder so many of them were such odd fish – Kitchener, Rosebery, Salisbury, Dilke, Curzon, Carson, Randolph Churchill, Fisher, Rhodes, Milner. In many cases certitude was replaced by a streak of violence…”
Paul Johnson The Offshore Islanders
“Each man may have a glass to see things past whereby he may judge justly of things present, and wisely of things to come.”
Grafton’s Chronicle (1569), quoted in Robin Neillands, The Wars of the Roses
In my latest Loonie Politics column I welcome the crowded field of contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, because somewhere in the field they might be able to find a candidate whose policies are not berserk and who actually seems to like America.
“A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted by John Witte, Jr. in First Things March 2004
Today I’m really excited to announce the launch of a new project, the Climate Discussion Nexus, to promote a polite, intelligent discussion of climate policy and the science behind it. We’re producing a weekly newsletter, videos, a blog and other media, and offering a forum for debate, analysis and data.
I’m the Executive Director and you can find more information at the CDN website, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe on YouTube, get our weekly newsletter (on climatediscussionnexus.com, lower right corner), share the initiative with your friends, colleagues and family, and consider donating to support this venture going forward.
At the Climate Discussion Nexus there are no sacred cows and no taboos except rudeness and ignorance.
Nobody’s happy with the current state of our national conversation on climate change. It’s time to open up the discussion for real.
So please join us and help spread the word.
“History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done.”
Hendrick Van Loon, The Story of Mankind