“This rock [Plymouth Rock] has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen fragments carefully preserved in several American cities. Does not that clearly prove that man’s power and greatness resides entirely in his soul? A few poor souls trod for an instant on this rock, and it has become famous; it is prized by a great nation; fragments are venerated, and tiny pieces distributed far and wide. What has become of the doorsteps of a thousand palaces? Who cares about them?”

Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (Lawrence’s translation) [though giving I think a bit too much credit to the Pilgrims in his talk of Puritans]

“That was by no means the first time the question had arisen whether he was more pigheaded than I was strong-minded.”

Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue re himself and Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout “Murder is Corny” in Trio for Blunt Instruments

“All bad language necessarily weakens itself by use.”

G.K. Chesterton in The Bookman December 1931 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a d*** fool about it.”

W.C. Fields, quoted in the features on a DVD of six classic W.C. Fields shorts [I cast my net widely].

After describing the origins, wars, foreign intrigues etc. surrounding the big-endian/little-endian schism he claims the holy book says “‘that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’ And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine.”

Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels

In my latest Epoch Times column I say one reason Canadian politicians are struggling to respond to Trump’s tariff threats is that most of them are closet mercantilists who just say they favour and understand free trade.

“A recent article on the left-wing website Rabble.ca, of all places, accused him [Jack Layton] of being ‘a political doughnut ... All sugar icing on the outside ... and a big hole right in the middle.’”

Adam Radwanski in Ottawa Citizen April 1, 2004

In my latest Loonie Politics column I complain that provincial conservative first minister Doug Ford is just as contemptuous of the legislature as federal liberal first minister Justin Trudeau… and legislators and we citizens let him get away with it.