“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”

Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci according to izquotes.com/quote/leonardo-da-vinci/he-who-does-not-punish-evil-commands-it-to-be-done-275351

“Unmaking the bomb (as I’ve written before) is like trying to un-eat the forbidden fruit. Leaving the Tree of Knowledge alone might have been a better choice, but it’s a bit too late for that. Pretending it never happened isn’t a useful idea. God had good reasons for his dietary restrictions in the Garden of Eden, arbitrary as they may have seemed to his critics, then and since.”

George Jonas in National Post August 8, 2015 (defending the use of nuclear weapons to end World War II; interestingly, Jonas was not a believer)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau and a number of those around him must resign unless they can prove that Jody Raybould-Wilson is either lying or deluded… which seems highly unlikely.

"The great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the ordinary and trite sophism of oppression."

Edmund Burke, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things February 2003 (crediting it to a letter from Nino Langiulli of Lynbrook, New York and calling it "an observation of the ever–quotable Edmund Burke with which I was not familiar").

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer, quoted on “Preacher’s Illustrative Nuggets” (www.hound-dog-media.com/2014/01/gamblers-fools-and-egotists-59-still_31.html)

In my latest National Post column I say, as a very reluctant interventionist, that the time has come to oust Venezuela’s dictator.