“Why is experience so useless? One explanation is that most people are lazy and would rather not learn from the past. Instead, they hover in a gauzy present, one that has as little connection to what happened 10 years ago as to 10,000 years ago.”
Paul Kedrosky in National Post December 29, 1998
In my latest Epoch Times column I weigh the morality of giving Ukraine a particularly effective weapon that’s particularly dangerous to civilians.
In my latest National Post column I goggle at the sense of entitlement of our Governor General and leftist politicians.
“The Duke of Sussex’s ghostwriter has defended Spare from claims of inaccuracies and historical errors... J.R. Moehringer... shared a quote from Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir, which said: ‘The line between memory and fact is blurry, between interpretation and fact. There are inadvertent mistakes of those kinds out the wazoo.’ Moehringer tweeted the Duke’s words: ‘Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory, it does what it does ... and there’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.’... More errors have emerged since the publication of the book earlier this week, such as the Duke’s recollection of where he was when he was told that the Queen Mother, his great-grandmother, had died.”
National Post January 13, 2023
“The only thing I am afraid of is fear.”
The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]
“there is scarcely anything that could offend me in modern England which is not far more offensive in modern Germany. It is there that these things have had their real success; it is there that they will have their real failure. You may say that Germany leads the modern world. You may, if you like, say that Germany is the modern world. But, if that be so, what is called the modern world is, amid general rejoicings, coming to an end. With all its mirthless cynicism, with all its unmanly militarism, with its sham science and shifty diplomacy, with its excuses for the powerful and its routine for the poor, with its long words of explanation and its very short cuts in conduct, with all its care of the self, and all its carelessness of the soul, what some call the Modern Spirit is cast out of heaven like Lucifer, Son of the Morning. It is cut down to the earth, that did weaken the nations.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, September 9, 2016, quoted in “GKC on Scripture * Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
In my latest Epoch Times column I mock the notion that NATO can use “pressure” to stop Trudeau from being irresponsible, smug and daffy.
“Our army is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth.”
“The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.”
“The scum of the earth... but what fine soldiers we have made them.”
All from The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington] [and I think it only fair to put them all together for a complete picture].