“May you live through interesting times.”
Another of mine, from September 13 2001 (and yes, adapted from the supposed Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.”)
.
“A charitable view is that [Alan] Greenspan is what Karl Popper called a ‘historicist’ – one who believes the way people respond to incentives changes, so that economic models true last year are no longer true today…. But, what looks like an open and forward-looking mind may be, as Popper suggested, nothing more than a mind without bearings.”
Filip Palda in Ottawa Citizen March 17, 2000
In a Loonie Politics piece I should have posted a couple of weeks ago I say it would be instructive to look back at old newspapers to see what did get covered, and how, as opposed to what turned out to matter and why.
“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is a misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’”
Marcus Aurelius, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail September 11, 2002
“Happy the people whose annals are tiresome, happy the people whose annals are vacant.”
Montesquieu, according to Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution
In my latest Epoch Times column I denounce the enduring capacity of politicians to be surprised by predictable developments and then unable to cope with them.
“As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a challenge to fight, say ‘No’ if you can – only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say ‘No.’ It’s a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It’s quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don’t say ‘No’ because you fear a licking, and say or think it’s because you fear God, for that’s neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don’t give in while you can stand and see.”
Thomas Hughes Tom Brown’s Schooldays
“The history of mankind is an immense sea of errors in which a few obscure truths may here and there be found.”
Cesare de Beccaria (a.k.a. Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio), quoted in Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle