"Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so."

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail August 31, 2005

"Okay, enough blue-skying; let’s grey-sky it a bit."

Ric Dolphin in Western Standard June 28, 2004

"What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?"

Lily Tomlin, Search for Signs of Intelligent Life, quoted in The New Republic Oct. 7, 1991

"He has summer teeth... you know, some are yellow, some are brown, some are missing"

The announcer on a WWE program on TV (I swear it came on while I was on the phone and I heard this before I could grab the remote and change the channel; I have no idea what date except WWE was still WWF then... but you have to admit it's funny)

If you're in Ottawa on Tuesday Nov. 21, I'll be speaking at a "Tories on Tap" event on taxation that evening. It's organized by the Ottawa Centre Conservatives and you can register here though as always I'm not appearing in a partisan capacity.

For the record, I'm a Whig. But I'll speak to anyone looking for good ideas in public policy.

In my latest National Post column I argue that our Prime Minister's inability to recognize evil and malice in the world is baked into his cheerfully daffy worldview.

"We should always endeavour to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth."

G.K. Chesterton, The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani Chesterton University Student Handbook.

"History, alas, has a way of hanging on."

Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World