"a mind, as H.G. Wells observed of the President [Franklin Roosevelt], 'appallingly open,' open indeed at both ends, through which all sorts of half-baked ideas flow…"

John T. Flynn, Country Squire in the White House, excerpted in S.I. Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action

"What President Bush will need is an agenda that catches fire without blowing up."

National Review Dec. 18, 2000 [if the comment had a specified author I failed to write it down]

"No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it."

Theodore Roosevelt (when he was New York City Police Commissioner)

"In his 1906 Recollections of 13 Presidents, John Sergeant Wise, who had met Pierce, tells of the reaction of a lifelong acquaintance of Pierce’s when he learned the man had won the presidency. ‘Now Frank’s a good fellow, I admit,’ the elderly man said, ‘and I wish him well. He made a good state’s attorney, thar’s no doubt about that, and he made a far judge, thar’s no denying that, and nobody kain’t complain of him as a congressman. But when it comes to the whole Yewnited States, I dew say that in my jedgement Frank Pierce is agoin’ to spread durned thin.'"

Cynthia Crossen in James Taranto and Leonard Leo, eds., Presidential Leadership

"It’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope. Stop arguing and do as you’re told."

James Langton’s guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, in the Sunday Telegraph, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen Dec. 17 2000

"The important borders during the Cold War were seen as those that separated capitalists from communists, Americans from Soviets, East from West. But not to dissidents. Of course, more than anyone else, we were painfully aware of these fault lines because we often paid the price for crossing them… Still, while the fault lines framed the larger geopolitical and ideological contours of the superpower face-off, they failed to capture what for many of us was an even more important threshold – a border that did not separate the world as it was, but rather as it might be. On one side stood those who were prepared to confront evil. On the other stood those who were prepared to appease it."

Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer, The Case for Democracy

In my latest National Post column I say the recent cruise missile attack on Syrian chemical weapons sites sent all too clear a message... of weakness.

In my latest National Post column I say government regulation of Facebook would actually make a bad situation worse, that it's censorship, and that self-control beats state control.