“Why, unhappy man, do you thus take pains to exonerate fortune of your heaviest charge against her, by conduct that will make it seem that you are not unjustly in calamity, and that it is not your present condition, but your former happiness, that was more than your deserts? And why depreciate also my victory, and make my conquests insignificant, by proving yourself a coward, and a foe beneath a Roman?”

Aemilius Paulus to Perseus when the latter abased himself in defeat, according to Plutarch’s Lives I

“I’m not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.”

William Hazlitt [https://www.azquotes.com/quote/127744]

“Charlemagne receives a buffet that goes near to bring him down: the voice of St Gabriel, rallying him, has that tart stringency which distinguishes the Divine word from pious vapourings: ‘And what’, said he, ‘art thou about, great King?’”

Dorothy L. Sayers’ introduction to The Song of Roland

“Intelligence is a talent, not a virtue. Even so it is less about sheer ability than about the organization of personality.”

J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]

“The Modern Mind is so called to distinguish it from the Mind.”

G.K. Chesterton in America March 15, 1930, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)

“I like a look of Agony because I know it’s true.”

Emily Dickenson quoted in Thomas Boswell How Life Imitates the World Series

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

Emailed by a friend and attributed to Yogi Berra, plausibly, though it exists in various versions including "You can see a lot, just by looking" and "You can observe a lot by watchin'" and "You can observe a lot by just watching" [see for instance https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/25697/what-is-the-source-of-the-quote-you-can-see-a-lot-just-by-looking].

In a talk to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta "Freedom Talk" in Red Deer, AB on July 7 I argue that a radical commitment to truth-telling, including refusing to remain silent in the face of lies, is crucial to personal and to political freedom.