“The river of human nonsense flows on forever.”
G.K. Chesterton, “A Sermon on Inns,” in The Flying Inn, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #1 (September 2003)
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/ Weep, and you weep alone;/ For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,/ But has trouble enough of its own…. There is room in the halls of pleasure/ For a large and lordly train,/ But one by one we must all file on/ Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude,” in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [beginning and end of the poem]
“‘What is it that I don’t know?’ Sir Humphrey feigned ignorance. ‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you don’t know. It could be almost anything.’”
A Jim Hacker diary entry in Yes Minister Vol. I
“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
St. Augustine, quoted on title page of John Stewart Collis Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body.
“When experience is not retained… infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, quoted in Leonard Read Let Freedom Reign [I know you all know the 2nd part, but the 1st is also important]
“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted on www.brainyquote.com/quotes/dietrich_bonhoeffer_164002
“Stupidity is pretty easy to spot, but intelligence can be quite an elusive trait to define.”
Stephen Reucroft and John Swain “in The Boston Globe.” quoted in Globe & Mail Nov. 16, 2001
“Everything Milton [Friedman] touches has the feel of his optimism…”
William F. Buckley, Jr. in National Review July 18, 2005 [at which point Friedman was 93]