In The Interim I reflect on classic books on the vital topic of citizenship only to realize I can’t think of any.
“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)
“Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair and you'll be a thousand times better off.”
Malcolm X (widely quoted online; I was first alerted to it in a paraphrase in the Ottawa Citizen March 7, 1999)
“No one of his Cabinet really understood Lincoln. He was constantly scandalizing them by his calm disregard of convention, and his seemingly prodigal waste of time. The friends and advisers of Jesus were similarly shocked. How could any one with such important business allow himself to be so casually interrupted! One of the surest marks of greatness, of course, is accessibility and the appearance of having an unstinted allowance of time. ‘Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality,’ says Stevenson. The disciples were extremely busy, Judas most of all.”
Bruce Barton The Man Nobody Knows
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the Trudeau administration’s attack on the rights of Parliament is no less dangerous for being the result of arrogant ignorance not clever conspiracy.
In my latest National Post column I say classes where students of one race only are taught material by authors of once race only by teachers of one race only is still segregation and still wrong practically and morally.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say if we cancel Canada Day, and Canada, because we can’t see that an open society that admits mistakes beats the alternatives hollow, we’ll learn it the hard way.
“I didn’t know of anybody in my entire platoon that wanted to kill, who ever killed before.”
Robert Santos in Al Santoli, ed., Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by 33 American Soldiers Who Fought It