In my latest Epoch Times column I argue that optimism is a psychological condition and generally fatuous, while hope is a theological virtue, in public affairs as in life more generally.
She’s deploring the reflex (when someone fails to say “Thank You” when you hold a door) of feeling “exasperated – but, crucially, not surprised…. ‘Typical!’ you say. As Kate Fox points out, ‘Typical!’ is one of our default modes… The ‘Typical!’ response is actually quite self-flattering, of course. It suggests that fate can never wrong-foot us because we are always prepared for the worst or most unlikely event. ‘So then my sister-in-law had a sex change and went off to live in Krakatoa. Typical!’ we exclaim. ‘So then they started bombing Baghdad. Typical!’ ‘The cat turned out to be a reincarnation of a seventh-century Chinese prophet. Typical!’”
Lynne Truss Talk to the Hand
The notoriously absentminded G.K. Chesterton “frequently forgot to keep appointments and often needed to write an apology to the person he stood up. One time, however, he arrived punctually to see his publisher (to the publisher’s astonishment). But he then handed the man a note containing an explanation of why he couldn’t be there.”
Eric J. Scheske in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #8 (July/August 2002)
“any religion that does not say that God is hidden is not true, and any religion which does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does both.”
Pascal Pensées
“Quote of the Day: ‘Nothing says poor workmanship like wrinkled duct tape.’”
Red Green in Ottawa Sun October 24, 1999
“Speaking fluently and clearly will be put at the heart of the national curriculum and given the same status as literacy and numeracy under a Labour government, Sir Keir Starmer has pledged. In an article for The Times the Labour leader says that the ‘almost exclusive’ focus on reading and writing at present is ‘short-sighted’ as he calls for oracy to be given priority at every level of a child’s education.”
The Times July 5, 2023 [the teaser referred to “oracy” and I went to scoff but stayed to listen]
“I do not find myself often agreeing with the late Lord Keynes, but he has never said a truer thing than when he wrote, on a subject on which his own experience has singularly qualified him to speak, that ‘the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new ideas after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply are not likely to be the newest. But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good and evil.’”
Friedrich Hayek “‘Free’ Enterprise and Competitive Order” in Individualism and Economic Order
“One of the most famous English-language commentators in the 20th century, Malcolm Muggeridge, famously referred to ‘the great liberal death wish.’ In Canada, we could correctly call it the great Liberal death wish.”
Conrad Black in National Post Feb. 10, 2024 [roasting Justin Trudeau].