In my latest Epoch Times column I say it’s amazing that people still think our governments can make us healthy, wealthy, wise and well-housed when they routinely bungle their most elementary responsibilities including national defence, unable even to find weapons for our desperately undersized military.
“For the spirit of man needs a mandolin as a comrade to face the verdict of the chilly stars as he needs a bulldog for more mundane things.”
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (I can't resist his full name and title) in Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley
“History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
Often attributed to Mark Twain in various forms (for instance “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme”) but there is no evidence that he said it (see for instance https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/) although he obviously should have.
“There’s this psychoanalytic adage: If you don’t understand the motivation, look at the consequences and infer the motivation.”
Jordan Peterson in a podcast with Michael Shellenberger (citing the example of Hitler wreaking murderous havoc then committing suicide).
In my latest National Post column I say Trudeau’s mean-spirited, partisan remarks about the truckers’ convoy reflect a chronically divisive approach at a time when Canadians need a respectful exchange of ideas not a surly exchange of insults.
“In 1913 a sign hung in the lobby of the Stag Hotel in Golden City, Ontario, stated succinctly, WE KNOW THIS HOTEL IS ON THE BUM. WHAT ABOUT YOURSELF?”
Peter Unwin in The Beaver October-November 2004
“Reach for the stars even if you have to stand on a cactus.”
Susan Longacre in “Quotable Quotes” in Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition March 2006
“That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. We are in the wrong world. When I thought that was the right town, it bored me; when I knew it was wrong, I was happy. So the false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don’t fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Ballad of a Strange Town” in Tremendous Trifles, quoted by Joseph Grabowski in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #11 (9-10/21)