"The contemplative life is often miserable. You should do more, think less and not watch yourself living."
Nicholas-Sebastien Chamfort, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe & Mail Oct. 22, 2002
In my latest Looniepolitics column I worry that the Auditor General's description of government failures as "incomprehensible" suggests that our political class has far too little grasp of how the state in which they place so much faith actually works... or doesn't.
"Without the individuals whose names have dominated the preceding pages – Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Konoe and Tojo, Churchill and Roosevelt – the course of history would have been different. But how different? The role of the individual set against the impersonal, external determinants of change is a perpetual conundrum in the interpretation of history.... the individuals at the centre of our enquiry were not ciphers or mere ‘front-men’. They had an input that is not simply reducible to a personalized representational function of such forces.”
Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices
In my latest National Post column I thank Kathleen Wynne for breaking with political tradition and, on her way out, saying something during an election that everybody already knew was true anyway.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other."
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (quoted on https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/679-war-is-an-ugly-thing-but-not-the-ugliest-of)
"After the first silence the small man said to the other: 'Where does a wise man hide a pebble?' And the tall man answered in a low voice: 'On the beach.' The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: 'Where does a wise man hide a leaf?' And the other answered: 'In the forest.'"
G.K. Chesterton, Favorite Father Brown Stories
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work."
"U.S. artist Chuck Close" quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail August 19, 2008