“Modern men are less anxious to be men than to be moderns.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly December 26, 1935, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
“An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary – however absurd – to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life.”
Algernon Blackwood in “The Willows” in Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
In my latest Loonie Politics column I note the extraordinary contrast between England’s Bad King John, at a crisis in his reign, ordering books of theology in Latin for guidance and modern politicians I doubt even read trendy airport paperbacks on policy in English.
“Let the common man bend more of his attention, more at least than he is doing at present, to the preservation of some permanent reason for living, some permanent thing worth fighting for. Let him take care of his philosophy, and his civilization will take care of itself.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News August 4, 2006, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook
“What we require is the expansion of education, until it includes much older and wiser things.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Nov. 6, 1920, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
“My dear friend, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was once accosted by a lady who complained that the synagogue service did not say what she meant. ‘Madam,’ said Heschel, ‘the idea is not that the service should say what we mean but that we should mean what the service says.’”
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in response to a letter in First Things August-September 2004
In my latest Mercatornet column I say the election of Donald Trump has certainly had a depressing effect on the giant climate gabfest in Baku but far more as symptom than as cause.
“In today’s broken world, especially with its broken education system, which is part of the reason for the broken world, nothing very great is being achieved. In fact, nearly nothing at all is being achieved when students can’t even achieve basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, much less studying great works of literature and philosophy, and learning the art of reason. The lack of achievement is because students are not being taught to focus on a truth that is outside of themselves. They’re being taught to focus on themselves – on their identity, on their rights and their entitlements, and are not taught anything to benefit their unformed and unfilled minds. In the meantime, they have a hunger for truth and goodness and beauty, and it is completely unsatisfied in a system that is designed to starve them of these things. As a result, they are left angry and depressed, but also inarticulate – because they have not been taught to be articulate – so they cannot even express their frustration. And they collapse into their lonely inner world.”
David Warren in Ottawa Citizen Nov. 29, 2006