“‘All the same,’ said the Scarecrow, ‘I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.’ ‘I shall take the heart,’ returned the Tin Woodman; ‘for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.’”

L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz

“Such reactions [seeing only the enormous good or bad potential of a new technology] are amplified by what might be termed chronocentricity – the egotism that one’s own generation is posed on the very cusp of history. Today, we are repeatedly told that we are in the midst of a communications revolution. But the electric telegraph was, in many ways, far more disconcerting...”

Epilogue in Tom Standage The Victorian Internet

“It is a sign of sharp sickness in a society when it is actually led by some special sort of lunatic.”

G.K. Chesterton in "The Miser and His Friends" in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed, and Other Essays (emailed by a friend)

In my latest National Post column I say the first step toward an effective foreign policy is to abandon illusions about the effectiveness of “soft power” without something hard behind it.

“The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.”

Josh Billings, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail May 17, 2001