“Friends, when once a man is launched on such an adventure as this, he must bid farewell to hopes and fears, otherwise death or deliverance will both come too late to save his honour and his reason.”
Prince Rilian in C.S. Lewis The Silver Chair
“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he has not created himself – and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted by Alberto Knox in Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy
“We live surrounded by mysteries and imagine that by inventing names we explain them.”
W.B. Seabrook, “Goat-Cry, Girl-Cry,” in Chancellor Press Great Ghost Stories
In my latest National Post column I remind commentators that Notre Dame is a Paris “tourist attraction” and historical landmark because it’s a very beautiful church, and suggest that it’s beautiful because of the faith that built it.
In Convivium I warn that AI threatens our humanity almost as much if it does work as it threatens humanity if it runs amok.
“How come dumb stuff seems so smart while you’re doing it?”
Dennis the Menace, quoted in NCC Overview Winter 2002
“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.”
G.K. Chesterton in the introduction to The Defendant