“human behaviour ultimately derives from human volition – tastes, attitudes, values, and so on – and these aspects of volition in turn are either formed entirely by choices or are the product of biological or social processes that we cannot or will not change.... The one thing we cannot easily do, if we can do it at all, is change, by plan and systematically, the minds of men.”
James Q. Wilson Thinking About Crime
“Solzhenitsyn recalls a fellow prisoner’s comment that ‘cruelty is invariably accompanied by sentimentality.)”
Dan Gardner in Ottawa Citizen “Citizen’s Weekly” April 29, 2001
“Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.”
James Garfield in the House of Representatives June 1874 (https://libquotes.com/james-a-garfield/quote/lbe6w7b)
“It is a strange thing how the pain of seeing the suffering of those we love will sometimes make us add to their suffering by being cross with them. This comes of not having faith enough in God, and shows how necessary this faith is, for when we lose it, we lose even the kindness which alone can soothe the suffering.”
George MacDonald At the Back of the North Wind
“Since life’s a series of disasters, you’d better choose disasters worth having, ones you’ll enjoy & learn from.”
Richard J. Needham according to an email from a friend and colleague May 25, 2001 (I wasn’t able to verify it independently but if Needham didn’t say it he missed a splendid opportunity, to crib from J.M. Barrie’s comment on the theory that Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare)
In my latest National Post column I say the increasingly obvious crumbling of key public institutions in Canada is proof that social justice is as antisocial as it is unjust.
“Remember that the faith that moves mountains always carries a pick.”
D.P. Diffiné, “The 1993 American Incentive System Almanac”.
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” not further attributed in Epoch Times email newsletter November 26, 2021.