"I allow that, if no Supreme Ruler exists, wise to form and potent to enforce the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs

"It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life…"

St. Augustine The City of God (speaking of "evil men")

"it is axiomatic that one cannot have a duty to do something that cannot be done."

George Will in Washington Post August 17, 2003, quoted in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy

In my latest National Post column I say liberal reactions to actual diversity tend to be unfavourable, suggesting that their theoretical devotion to it simply confuses debate.

“Have they [the philosophers] found the cure for our ills? Is it curing man’s presumption to set him up as God’s equal?”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

"On his deathbed, Chesterton proclaimed: 'The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness, and everyone must choose his side.'"

Kevin O’Reilly in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #2 (October-November 2001)

In my latest National Post column I provide Canada's Prime Minister with the independent inquiry he demanded into Israel's use of force to protect its borders against Hamas terrorism.

"Religion alone makes the righting of wrongs seem urgent without magnifying them to fill the whole universe, alone allows of humility without subservience, determination without arrogance, and contentment without inertia. It is, in fact, the only alternative to Totalitarianism, which explains why religion and the Totalitarian State are always at war with one another."

Malcolm Muggeridge in "Time and Tide" (1937) in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge