“I believe… That our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become…. I believe… That you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them…. I believe… That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel…. I believe… That either you control your attitude, or it controls you…. I believe… That sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.”

Somone emailed this “I believe” document to me as a Power Point presentation around August 2005. It seems to be extant online in various forms with “Author unknown” or words to that effect.

“People asked him [Thomas Edison, almost totally deaf from childhood] why he didn’t invent a hearing aid. Father always replied, ‘How much have you heard in the last twenty-four hours that you couldn’t do without?’ He followed this up with: ‘A man who has to shout can never tell a lie.’”

Edison’s son Charles in William Bennett The Book of Virtues

“for God, there are no throw-away people”

“Rev. André Drouin, a parish priest at Ste. Anne, a downtown Ottawa church” who worked among others with AIDS patients, quoted in Ottawa Citizen Dec. 1, 2000

“You’re so thin you’d have to stand twice in the same place to make a shadow!”

“Shorty” in Louis L’Amour The Trail to Seven Pines

On Alex Epstein’s “Power Hour” podcast we had an extended discussion of China’s geopolitical ambitions and how the Western obsession with “Net Zero” plays into the hands of a Politburo all too happy to keep using fossil fuels while we cripple ourselves by discarding them.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I try to explain to the smart set that Putin is “testing” Biden over Ukraine to see whether he can get away with attacking it.

“Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?”

“More Unanswerables” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #4 (1-2/04)

“The human psyche and human nature are artful dodgers.”

Sen. Anne Cools in a speech in the Senate March 13, 2001, quoted in Hansard Vol. 139