“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.”

“British novelist G. B. Stearn” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail November 15, 2007

“the Doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped.”

Herbert Spencer on the question of ethics and morality, quoted in Famous Last Words calendar July 14, 2003

“A man lives by believing something, not by debating and arguing about many things.”

Thomas Carlyle, quoted in J.W. Marriott Jr. And Kathi Ann Brown, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way

“For Christmas is, as a matter of fact, the standing example of the proposition which I have lately been maintaining; I mean the proposition that without the superhuman we are not human.”

G.K. Chesterton debating newspaper editor Robert Blatchford in December 2003, quoted by Sean P. Dailey in “Tremendous Trifles” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #3 (December 2003)

“Social questions are the vital questions of today; they take the place of religion.”

Beatrice Webb in her diary in 1884, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb The De-moralization of Society

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Archilochus, a 7th century BC Greek poet, quoted by Paul P. Streeton in Gerald M. Meier and Dudley Seers Pioneers in Development

“Those who maintain that, provided he is good, a man is happy on the rack or surrounded by great disasters, is talking nonsense, whether intentionally or not.”

Aristotle, Ethics

“We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behaviour. And it would seem, at first sight, very sensible to stop before we got there, and just carry on with those parts of morality that all sensible people agree about. But can we?”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity