In my latest National Post column I say people enjoy the comforting blanket of political make-believe yet crave truth when reality intrudes.
“Leaders have two characteristics: (1) they are going somewhere; (2) they can persuade others to go with them.”
D.P. Diffiné, “The 1993 American Incentive System Almanac”.
"The commander of the local French naval district… answered as if he were conversing with a fungus."
Clive Cussler in The Sea Hunters (a true story, in which the commander is answering Cussler)
"the one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle – and not lose it."
G.K. Chesterton "Time’s Abstract and Brief Chronicle" according to Dale Ahlquist. It was paraphrased by Kara Kelley in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #5 (March-April 2005) as "The most romantic thing in the world is to fight a losing battle, and not lose." Which is almost the only case I know of where somebody rephrased Chesterton and may have improved him.