"Shortly before his death in the 1920s, Mr. [former French Premier Georges] Clemenceau discussed the question of guilt over the [First World] war’s outbreak with a representative of Germany’s Weimar Republic. 'What, in your opinion, will future historians think of this controversial issue?' the representative asked. 'This I do not know,' Mr. Clemenceau replied. 'But I know for certain that they will not say Belgium invaded Germany.'" Letter from David Dear, Edmonton, in Globe & Mail July 23 1996
"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"Socialism… is full of the idea that an ordinary person is incompetent and must be superseded by an official – who is also an ordinary person.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)