"I always prefer to believe the best of everybody. It saves so much trouble."

Mrs. Mallowe in Rudyard Kipling, "A Second-Rate Woman" in Under the Deodars
 

"We do care far more about all sorts of things and people than is at all rational if this life is all…"

James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity

"A penny saved is a little piece of copper that stays in your pocket for 10 hours."

From a list of maxims in Globe and Mail Nov. 29, 2001 sent by Nicola Gilman’s Grade 3 class at Calgary Montessori School

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

G.K. Chesterton in "On Running After One’s Hat," in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton

In my latest National Post column I say it's not reasonable to think the accelerating pace of technological and social change is remotely sustainable.

"The past is many things, but one thing it is, is irrevocable. A past to your liking is not an entitlement."

Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?
 

"Few human acts are so difficult as to say mea culpa, to face facts when they conflict with long-held philosophical views. People will do so only when they suffer severe personal injury if they persist in error. That is why businessmen, who may be bankrupted if they refuse to face facts, are one of the few groups that develop the habit of doing so."

Milton Friedman’s Preface to William Simon A Time for Truth p. xiii.