More of Robson’s Rules of History: “It’s worse than you think. It’s worse than I think. They are not kidding.”
Me again, obviously, at some point in autumn 1997.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s actually good news that about two-thirds of Canadians in a poll said they think “everything is broken in this country right now” because we still expect better and have not spiraled into rage, paranoia or, worst of all, resignation.
“the aim of studying history is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises for its practical application, or to decide that the present situation is different after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its lesson for the present. The man who cannot do this must not conceive of himself as a political leader; in reality he is a shallow, though usually very conceited, fool, and no amount of good will can excuse his practical incapacity.”
You may hate me for this one, and I did hesitate before posting it, because the source is Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. But it remains true even if the person who said it was evil.
“Now if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired … You’ve always got to make the mind take over and keep going.”
“George S. Patton, general” quoted by Donna Jacobs “Monday Morning” in Ottawa Citizen October 2, 2006
“All this shows how much luck there is in human affairs, and how little we should worry about anything except doing our best.”
Winston Churchill The Hinge of Fate [with respect to Parliament not turning on him in the dark period]
In my latest National Post column I say it is humans, not frogs, who fail to react as circumstances slowly change in terrible ways like governments piling up debt.
“The most essential educational product is Imagination…. The child who can see the pictures in the fire will need less to see the pictures on the film…. So long as the minds of the poor were perpetually stirred and enlivened by ghost-stories, fairy-stories and legends of wild and wonderful things, they remained comparatively contented; possibly too contented, but still contented. The moment modern science and instruction stopped all these things, we had a Labour Question and the huge discontent of today… dull people always want excitement.”
“The True Victorian Hypocrisy,” in G.K. Chesterton Brave New Family
“‘Are you going to go back to farming after the war, captain?’ ‘I can think of better ways to make a living than looking up a mule’s arse.’”
Harry S Truman in the movie Truman (from his time in World War I), slightly Bowdlerized.