In my latest National Post column I say we must get over our belief that we can live without trade-offs or anything bad ever happening, and make real-world choices about quarantines and everything else.
“What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?”
Lily Tomlin’s "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" show, quoted in The New Republic Oct. 7, 1991
“After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience that a man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported.”
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted on www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ralph_waldo_emerson_384371
“what William James charitably called ‘earnest and helpless minds.’”
Daniel Boorstin The Genius of American Politics
“There is no way a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.”
G.K. Chesterton, regarding his fiancee, quoted by Robert More-Jumonville in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 5 (March 2001)
“‘Of course there might be a God. I just don’t know.’ You are either living as though He did, or living as though He didn’t. If you don’t know anything at all, then how did you choose?/ The psalmist famously wrote, ‘The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’’ Did he call the man a fool for not knowing God is real? Or for knowing God is real, but pretending to himself that he didn’t?/ Few people lose belief in God, and then do wrong. The more often traveled path is to do wrong, excuse it, then look for reasons to disbelieve in God.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" email “Reading an Empty Book” March 24, 2019.
“Misfortune is a point of view. Your headache may feel good to an aspirin salesman.”
Tony Robbins Unlimited Power