“It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions. The same events always follow from the same causes.”
David Hume, quoted in Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
In my latest National Post column I say major problems with British socialized medicine would offer important lessons for Canada if we could just get over our fixation with our health system being above reproach. If you agree, please join us for the EEA’s “Freedom School” on “Meeting the Healthcare Challenge” on Oct. 22 and 23.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say that early efforts to shut down debate over the increasingly plausible man-made origins of COVID just underline why free speech is important… at the very moment that Google and YouTube move on to efforts to suppress free debate on climate change.
“If persons do not behave in accordance with their own economic self-interest, objectively defined and measured, on what basis do they act?... The economist is well-equipped to recognize mush for what it is, and when noneconomists hypothesize that persons want to ‘do good,’ he quickly detects the absence of predictive content.”
“Is Constitutional Revolution Possible in Democracy?” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy
“I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.”
Susan Sontag, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail July 23 2001
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
David Brinkley, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html)
He contrasts the cynical modern student with the mediaeval counterpart struggling to reach Padua by mule “with earnest, brown eyes hungered with the desire to know. And in his hand a vellum-bound copy of Thomas Aquinas written in long hand… the Padua student wanted to know: not for a qualification, not because he wanted to be a pharmaceutical expert with a municipal licence, but because he thought the things in Thomas Aquinas and such to be things of tremendous import.”
“The Apology of a Professor” in Stephen Leacock Social Criticism: The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice and Other Essays (Leacock adds “They were not; but he thought so.”)
“You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece.”
Gunnery Sargeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket]