“Le cardinal de Richelieu a écrit dans ses mémoires qu’un ministre corrompu est moins dangereux pour l’État qu’un ministre incompétent.”
Jacques Dufresne La démocratie athénienne: Miroir de la Notre
“It was impressed on me by one of the best of mothers that ever lived that I must aim at being a thorough master of the work by which I had to get my living; and to be that, I must concentrate my whole energies on my work, whatever that might be, to the exclusion of every other thing. I soon discovered that if I ever accomplished anything in life it would be by pursuing my object with a persistent determination to attain it. I had neither the training nor the talents to accomplish anything without hard work, and fortunately I knew it.”
Canadian tycoon George Stephen, late in life, attributed his success to his Spartan training and singlemindedness, quoted in Pierre Berton The National Dream
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that NATO meeting in Turkey instead of expelling it indicats a collapse of faith in the Western civilization NATO was created to protect.
“In 1925, one of the most popular cars in America was the 20-horsepower Ford Model T. According to the manual, the Model T tops out at 45 miles per hour. Not bad, but there’s a catch. The aerodynamics of the car are so poor that Road & Track likens it to a barn door. That’s a problem in 100 mile per hour headwinds.”
Cody Cassidy How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes p. 191 [the context being could you escape the March 18, 1925 Tri-State Tornado in one and the answer being that in such conditions a Model T could barely keep up with a running man].
During the South Sea Bubble “‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’”
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [he provides no source or citation for that marvellous line, however].
Re the end of apartheid then communism: “Communism, weighed in the scales of history, had been found wanting. To [F.W.] de Klerk, pious Calvinist that he was, all this had manifestly appeared the writing of God’s finger on the affairs of the world. This was not, however, how it tended to be seen by policymakers in America and Europe. They drew a different lesson. That the paradise on earth foretold by Marx had turned out instead to be closer to a hell only emphasized the degree to which the true fulfillment of progress was to be found elsewhere. With the rout of communism, it appeared to many in the victorious West that it was their own political and social order that constituted the ultimate, the unimprovable form of government. Secularism; liberal democracy; the concept of human rights: these were fit for the whole world to embrace. The inheritance of the Enlightenment was for everyone: a possession for all of mankind. It was promoted by the West, not because it was Western, but because it was universal. The entire world could enjoy its fruits. It was no more Christian than it was Hindu, or confusion, or Muslim. There was neither Asian nor European. Humanity was embarked as one upon a common road. The end of history had arrived.”
Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
“Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs, fraternal, service, and nationality organisations. They are organizations and people that must be worked with as one would work with any other part of our population – with respect, understanding, and sympathy. To reject them is to lose them by default. They will not shrivel and disappear. You can’t switch channels and get rid of them. This is what you have been doing in your radicalized dream world but they’re here and will be. If we don’t win them Wallace or Spiro T. Nixon will.”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals [and it does help explain MAGA]
“It is in such times that we are haunted by the old maxim, ‘Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make ludicrous.’”
Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals