“Lord Salisbury’s observation that ‘no lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust in experts’”
Michael Mandelbaum in New York Times June 16, 1985 [and widely quoted online but not, in any examples I found, with further attribution as to when or where Salisbury said it].
“‘Those who can, do,’ but the converse, ‘those who do, can,’ is no less true, for we learn by doing.”
Anthony De Jasay The State (expressly regarding the possibility that we couldn’t spontaneously cooperate any more because we’ve lived under governments for so long).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau having the guy who was head of the Trudeau Foundation when it got a suspicious Chinese donation write a report exonerating Justin Trudeau over suspicious Chinese donations is a flagrant as well as a silly gesture of contempt for Canadians.
“Here we get closer still to the heart of the great human mystery. Nothing has been learned. The same people who made this catastrophic mistake recommend the same policies toward each new threat, as it arises; and the principle of appeasement is alive and well throughout the modern successor to the League of Nations.”
End of David Warren’s “Sunday Spectator” column in Ottawa Citizen Oct. 20, 2002 [specifically re dealing with North Korea]
In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s fine to argue over whether China is meddling in our elections, but if a large number of us don’t think it matters, we have no country.
“they [lawyers] are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them.”
J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur Letters from an American Farmer [and yes, I grant that it’s easy to mock lawyers until you need one]
“Way back in 1938 Walt Disney had some inspiring words about children’s entertainment: ‘everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.’ Going on a hundred years later, the company which he founded seems to have forgotten about ‘that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us’.”
Editor Michael Cook’s note in email from Mercatornet April 1, 2022, teasing to a Kurt Mahlburg article.
“the bitter saying, ‘We learn from history that we do not learn from history.’”
Thomas Szasz Ideology And Insanity