"Generally speaking, we do not realize a problem of the past till we realize it as a problem of the present, and even of the future."

G.K. Chesterton, “The Age of Chaucer,” in Chaucer, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #5 (March 2004)

"you cannot build prescriptions on mere knowledge of positive facts, however systematized and comprehensive. You need a goal as well... it is all very well to know how the world works... But unless you have some test whereby you can distinguish good from bad, desirable consequences from undesirable, you are without an essential constituent of a theory of policy. You are like the captain of a ship equipped with charts and compasses and all the means of propulsion and steering, but without an assigned destination. A theory of economic policy, in the sense of a body of precepts for action, must take its ultimate criterion from outside economics."

Lionel Robbins The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy pp. 176-77.
 

In my latest National Post column I argue against making the tax code even more complicated and unfair by extending charitable status in pursuit of social engineering.

"Thinking is loyalty to truth."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 27, 2011, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 16 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2013)

"You can’t pick plums in a desert."

Detective Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout Plot it Yourself

"A wise observer has said that young people will give their lives for an exclamation point, but they will not give their lives for a question mark."

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #169 (Jan. 2007)

"This study is an attempt to tell them that, not only is the Emperor naked, but his body is hardly a thing of beauty."

William Stanbury in Fraser Forum August 1998 [the actual topic was CanCon regulations, but the statement is apt surprisingly often]

"When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 'law,' for we do not understand its general formula...."

G.K. Chesterton in “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2007)