“My dad wasn’t lazy, he just had a genius for not considering the future.”
Audie Murphy, quoted in Edward F. Murphy, Heroes of World War II
“I invite the reader’s attention to the much more serious consideration [than myths in very early history] of the kind of lives our ancestors lived, of who were the men, and what the means both in politics and war by which Rome’s power was first acquired and subsequently expanded; I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.”
Titus Livius (“Livy”) The Early History of Rome
“The Convoy Conference prior to our sailing was held ashore at Cardiff and was so particularly dull and uninformative that the Flag Officer Cardiff fell sound asleep. The Conference certainly had the merit that it could not possibly have alarmed the Masters of the merchant ships who were being briefed for the venture.”
Bob Whinney, The U-Boat Peril: A Fight for Survival (regarding a convoy that sailed on June 5 to help supply the U.S. beaches on D-Day).
In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask why the legacy media are so reticent about covering suicide but so keen to report all the lurid details on (American) mass shootings
“The Master said, ‘Men of antiquity studied to improve themselves; men today study to impress others.’”
Confucius Analects XIV.24
In my latest Epoch Times column I say people arguing over whether government in Canada is “broken” should devise a checklist of the attributes of a genuinely broken government and then see how many of them we’ve got.
In my latest Epoch Times column I note the tragicomic contrast between the cosmic aspirations and vaulting self-regard of our politicians and their incapacity to discharge even basic functions of government.
“Men have no right to complain that they are naturally feeble and short-lived, or that it is chance and not merit that decides their destiny. On the contrary, reflection will show that nothing exceeds or surpasses the powers with which nature has endowed mankind, and that it is rather energy they lack than strength or length of days.”
Sallust, The Jugurthine War