"The open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth."
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Jim Hurlbert in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 # 7 (June 2004)
In my latest National Post column I ponder the sad naivete of Christie Brinkley finding it hard to meet a nice guy at age 63.
"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
Confucius, anticipating Donald Rumsfeld, quoted in Henry David Thoreau Walden (Project Gutenberg edition)
"a young woman I met recently... went back to school and was taking a basic literacy course. After weeks of discouragement, she found herself one day – for the first time – able to help her seven year-old daughter with her homework. She said it made her believe that you should never be frightened to reach for the moon. Even if you miss, she said, you will be amongst the stars."
Lloyd Axworthy in a speech to the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen March 1995
"To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man."
G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Andrew Coyne in Maclean’s Jan. 21, 2008
In my latest National Post column I express amazement at the ruckus over the Roman Catholic Church insisting that... communion wafers must contain wheat.
"True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful."
Paul Sweeney, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail December 20, 2004
“Religion may very well be an illusion, as Freud said, but then man himself is that illusion.”
William Barrett The Illusion of Technique