“One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
Will Durant, quoted in Globe & Mail June 2, 1999
“One of the most popular supposed short cuts is imagining that we can make our decisions easier by bypassing value judgments and assigning numbers to everything. Call this the numerical fallacy, or the fallacy of false precision. I’m not saying that it’s never useful to count things.... if a lot of people are out of work, I want some idea of how many, and if prices are going up, I want some idea of how much. The problem is that we rely on numbers too much, too carelessly, for too many things, and we trust them far more than we should. Excessive trust in numbers is part of the technocratic ideology which supposes that government by experts is not political.... There just isn’t a way of generating measurements that isn’t based on value judgments. The only question is which value judgments it depends on, and how transparently or obscurely it depends on them.... Fortunately, there is an instrument for making judgments: The human mind. And there is a way to calibrate it: Experience, deliberation, debate, and the cultivation of practical wisdom. Sorry, but there aren’t any short cuts.”
J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” Dec. 27, 2021 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/the-technocratic-fallacy-of-false-precision].
In my latest Epoch Times column I defend the desire of normal people to protect pleasant neighbourhoods from social engineering cement.
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Dorothy Parker, quoted by Earl in the cartoon Pickles in Ottawa Citizen February 16, 2009
“I guess the classic loser buck-me-up which John Diefenbaker used on every losing occasion is a quote from Sir Andrew Barton, an Elizabethan soldier: ‘…I am wounded but I am not slaine, I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile and then I’ll rise and fight againe.’ And he did.”
End of Val Sears column on the pain of political defeat in Ottawa Sun June 29, 2004
“For all you good folks who think Islam is just Christianity in funny hats, or that Islam is the ‘Religion of Peace’, or that ‘we all worship the same God’ .../ ... nope. None of those are true in the slightest.”
Tweet from Willis Eschenbach 20/4/22 [https://twitter.com/WEschenbach/status/1516845836566626304] commenting on tweet about “Islamic Republic of Iran gives converts to Christianity five years prison for ‘deviant propaganda’ https://wp.me/p4hgqZ-14wY”
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac?”
“Morning Smile” from Andrew Chan of Mississauga in Globe & Mail August 28, 1999 – but the line originated with comedian George Carlin
“I am inclined to think tradition has more of the sobriety of truth.”
G.K. Chesterton in America July 23, 1927, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2022) [I know I’ve been leaning heavily on GKC in recent items, but when someone says so many prescient things it’s a sign worth noting]