"He was a gentle, polite, elderly person with no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope. The Agency wits said he could spit icicles in July."

Dashiell Hammett Red Harvest (the narrator re his boss at the Continental Detective Agency)

In the latest August-September Landowner magazine I have an article on environmentalism as a religion, saying it has the virtue of grasping the need for repentance, despite repenting the wrong things in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons.

In my latest National Post column I argue that the federal Liberals' contempt for truth explains their contempt for Parliament.

"The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive."

George Orwell, quoted by Jeffrey Hart in National Review Feb. 8, 1999

"Should a traveller give an account of men who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, and revenge; who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit, we should immediately detect the falsehood and prove him a liar with the same certitude as if he had stuffed his narration with centaurs and dragons."

David Hume in 1772, quoted by Robert Ardrey in The Territorial Imperative

In my latest National Post column I say blaming a recent increase in severe storms on man-made global warming is nonsense not because the explanation is wrong in its details but because there hasn't been an increase in severe storms to explain in the first place.

For more useful facts and logical theories about the climate see my new documentary The Environment: A True Story.

"Faith is, indeed, most necessary in human affairs, as well as in religion. Without faith, no contracts could be concluded, nor could any business be transacted."

John of Salisbury in Metalogicon (1159), quoted in William L. Sachse English History in the Making