In a talk to the Augustine College Summer Seminar I argued that the American Revolution brought liberty and prosperity because it looked back to the solid foundations of Magna Carta, Christianity and the Western tradition, while the French Revolution brought misery and death because it looked forward to a utopian future unconstrained by the past.
“As Justice Jamie Campbell once wrote, ‘The Charter is not a blueprint for moral conformity. Its purpose is to protect the citizen from the power of the state, not to enforce compliance by citizens or private institutions with the moral judgements of the state.’ Trinity Western University v. Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, 2015 NSSC25, at para. 10. Sadly, this clear thinking was not followed by a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada in a similar case, where seven of nine judges ruled against Trinity Western University’s proposed Christian law school due to a perception the law school would discriminate against non-Christians.”
André Schutten and Michael Wagner, A Christian Citizenship Guide 2nd edition
“Making decisions is a great liberator; each time you make a decision, you feel a load lifted from your shoulders.”
From William Bezanson, as one of the honourable mention entries in their readers’ “Thought du Jour” contest, in Globe & Mail Nov. 9, 2002
“Tension is poison.”
Charley Lau with Alfred Glossbrenner, The Winning Hitter: How to Play Championship Baseball
“It is only from a normal standpoint that all the nonsense of the world takes on something of the wild interest of wonderland.”
G.K. Chesterton’s Introduction to Fancies vs Fads quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2021)
His home town of Hearne, SK “is so small we couldn’t afford a village idiot – everyone had to take turns.”
Allan Fotheringham in Maclean’s Oct. 25, 1999
“What is the good of words if they aren’t important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn’t any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn’t there be a quarrel about a word? If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning by moving your ears?”
G.K. Chesterton “The Peacemaker” in The Ball and the Cross, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“Cromwell was about to ravage the whole of Christendom; the royal family was lost and his own set for ever in power, but for a little grain of sand getting into his bladder. Even Rome was about to tremble beneath him. But, with this bit of gravel once there, he died, his family fell into disgrace, peace reigned and the king was restored.”
Pascal Pensées