Queen Victoria: "You are a genius.” Pianist Vladimir de Pachmann: "Perhaps, Your Majesty, but before that I was a drudge."

Clifton Fadiman, ed, The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

"You couldn’t get me there with a box of candy or a ton of dynamite."

Then-premier of Saskatchewan Roy Romanow on running for federal office, quoted in Maclean’s June 12, 1995

"the difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. The sacred fire through which Moshe (Moses) experienced the presence of God on Mount Horeb did not annihilate the bush from which it arose... Passion is divine fire: it enlivens and makes holy; it gives light and yields inspiration. Passion is generous because it’s not ego-drive; addiction is self-centred."

Gabor Maté In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

"Man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."

Euripides, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail April 17, 2013.

"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