“When fortune empties her chamberpot on your head, smile – and say ‘we are going to have a summer shower.’”
Sir John A. Macdonald, quoted by Dave Ryan in The Western Standard May 3, 2004
“When the affairs of a country are in a bad way it is useful to remember Oliver Cromwell’s advice to look back to the time when things went well and to try to see what subsequently went wrong. Complete success in such a task is rarely possible, but partial success would clearly repay the effort involved if it helped to unravel something of the tangled story of the rise and decline of great nations.”
Start of Introduction in F.R. Cowell Cicero and the Roman Republic
“After all, Vietnam was purportedly our Sicilian expedition…”
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review December 8, 2003
“And if any other document is henceforth produced which was made heretofore and which in any kind of way seems to gainsay what is here established, that document shall be cast to mice to gnaw or into the fire to be burned, and he who produces it, whatever his rank, shall be regarded as the sweepings of ashes and confounded with the most ignominious shame and with one accord shunned by all the men who are nearby.”
King Canute, to the monks of Canterbury as part of “The Endowment of a Monastery, 1023” in William L. Sachse English History in the Making
In BOE Report I say Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’ comparison of fighting climate change to World War III is unhappily appropriate since getting rid of fossil fuels would destroy our civilization just as World War III would have done. Which is why most of the drama is purely rhetorical as virtually none of our virtue-signaling politicians are willing to inflict such harm on purpose.
“What is happening to us is that we don’t know what is happening to us and that is exactly what is happening to us.”
José Ortega y Gasset, quoted by Allan Gotlieb in National Post November 17, 2000