"Winston Churchill once described the Balkans as a region that produced more history than it could consume."
Carol Off The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
"I remember that when I was a boy my teacher asked if anybody knew what laissez faire meant. I didn’t realize it was a French phrase. I thought it meant the government was 'lazy' and 'fair.' And it certainly worked well for Hong Kong under British rule."
Martin Lee in CATO Policy Report Vol. XXI, #6 (Nov./Dec. 1999)
In my latest National Post column I say Israelis should be proud, and others impressed, that a bribery scandal proves no one in Israel including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is above the law, in stark contrast to its unhappy neighbours.
"'Don’t you swelter all day in the sun?’ Epictetus asked rhetorically [comparing watching the logistically nightmarish ancient Olympic games to life generally]. 'Aren’t you jammed in with the crowds? Isn’t it hard to get a bath? Aren’t you soaked to the bone whenever it rains? Don’t the din and the shouting and the petty annoyances drive you completely mad? But of course you put up with it all because it’s an unforgettable spectacle.'"
Tony Perrottet, author of The Naked Olympics, in Ottawa Citizen July 17, 2004
In some sense the French Revolution was “the black desperate battle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment, - a battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and Darkness that was in themselves as in others: this is the Reign of Terror."
Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution
"If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."
T.S. Eliot "The Idea of a Christian Society" quoted in Russell Kirk The Politics of Prudence
“The main thing is never to act against your conscience, not to put your signature on documents you do not believe in, not to vote for those who you think should not be elected, not to approve decisions, not to applaud, not to pass on lies, not to broadcast them, not to write them, not to put them down on paper, not to pretend … Let your creed be 'Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph, but not through me.'"
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn "Live not by the Lie" quoted by Ian Hunter in National Post August 5, 2008