"We think of economics as strangled in math because of the formulas and graphs filling most economics textbooks. But you can (and I did) search the entire founding volume of economics, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, without encountering a mathematical formula. In New Ideas, Buchholz quotes Alfred Marshall, the preeminent economist of the late nineteenth century (and a mathematician): '(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them until you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics.'" P.J. O’Rourke Eat the Rich

"If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it." William A. Orton

"We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity." Otto von Bismarck, quoted by Arnold Beichman in National Review January 28, 2002

In my latest National Post column, which made the front page, I say the little yellow ducks waved at anti-corruption protests in Russia, Brazil and elsewhere are dangerous to brittle tyrannies.

"As G.K. Chesterton said, what makes religions different is not what their garb and customs are like, but what they hold to be true." James V. Schall S.J. in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2016)

"The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilized man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News April 18, 1906, reprinted in Gilbert! Vol. 3 #5 (March 2000)

"Socialism… is full of the idea that an ordinary person is incompetent and must be superseded by an official – who is also an ordinary person. Their whole philosophy is that a thing must not be done by somebody but by somebody else." G.K. Chesterton in New Witness July 6 1916, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 # 1 (Sept.-Oct. 2016)

"There are some people who say that they want Socialism, but do not want bureaucracy. Such persons I leave in simple despair. How any calculating creature can think that we can extend the number of Government offices without extending the number of Government officials and the prevalence of the official mind, I cannot even conjecture. Some people look forward to a splendid transformation of the general human soul. That is a good argument for accepting Socialism – and, when one comes to think of it, an even better reason for doing without it." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News January 2, 1909, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 # 1 (Sept.-Oct. 2016)