“A hasty general is the worst of generals nowadays; the best is a sort of von Moltke, who is passive if any man ever was passive; who is ‘silent in seven languages’…”
Walter Bagehot Physics and Politics
“L’humilité n’est souvent qu’une feinte soumission, dont on se sert pour soumettre les autres; c’est un artifice de l’orgueil qui s’abaisse pour s’élever; et bien qu’il se transforme en mille manières, il n’est jamais mieux déguisé et plus capable de tromper que lorsqu’il se cache sous la figure de l’humilité.”
Réflexions morales #254 in La Rochefoucauld Maximes
“You can no more evade in politics the question, What is true in religion? than you can do sums right without prejudice to a difference of opinion upon the multiplication table.”
James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the idea of national strategies where governments reform citizens is bad, including if one targets “Islamophobia”.
“He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.”
Edmund Burke in his “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol”, cited in Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics & Belief
An election-night pundit “appeared to have had her hair fried for the occasion.”
John Doyle, “Television,” in Globe & Mail November 3, 2004
In my latest National Post column I express enthusiasm for freedom in Cuba… and Canada.
“A very honest atheist with whom I once debated made use of the expression, ‘Men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell.’ As I pointed out to him, if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.”
G.K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 6 (April/May 2001)