In my latest National Post column I say liberal reactions to actual diversity tend to be unfavourable, suggesting that their theoretical devotion to it simply confuses debate.

"Religion alone makes the righting of wrongs seem urgent without magnifying them to fill the whole universe, alone allows of humility without subservience, determination without arrogance, and contentment without inertia. It is, in fact, the only alternative to Totalitarianism, which explains why religion and the Totalitarian State are always at war with one another."

Malcolm Muggeridge in "Time and Tide" (1937) in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge

"a mind, as H.G. Wells observed of the President [Franklin Roosevelt], 'appallingly open,' open indeed at both ends, through which all sorts of half-baked ideas flow…"

John T. Flynn, Country Squire in the White House, excerpted in S.I. Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action

"We must understand the difference between fear societies and free societies, between dictators and democrats. We must understand the link between democracy and peace and between human rights and security. Above all, we must bring back moral clarity so that we may draw on the power of free individuals, free nations, and the free world for the enormous challenges ahead."

Natan Sharansky’s “Preface” in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

"Let’s just say the alarm-bell ringers have a very good track record of being right, and those who dismiss them have a very good track record of being wrong."

John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute (re warnings about Naziism, Communism etc.), quoted by Donna Jacobs in Ottawa Citizen Dec. 17 2001

"The important borders during the Cold War were seen as those that separated capitalists from communists, Americans from Soviets, East from West. But not to dissidents. Of course, more than anyone else, we were painfully aware of these fault lines because we often paid the price for crossing them… Still, while the fault lines framed the larger geopolitical and ideological contours of the superpower face-off, they failed to capture what for many of us was an even more important threshold – a border that did not separate the world as it was, but rather as it might be. On one side stood those who were prepared to confront evil. On the other stood those who were prepared to appease it."

Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer, The Case for Democracy

“Think before you think.”

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, quoted on www.memorablequotations.com