“The problem is what is normal in man or, to put it more simply, what is human in him. Now, there are some who maintain, like Mr Blatchford, that the religious experience of the ages was abnormal, a youthful morbidity, a nightmare from which he is gradually waking. There are others like myself who think that on the contrary it is the modern rationalist civilization which is abnormal, a loss of ancient human powers of perception of ecstasy in the feverish cynicism of cities and empire. We maintain that man is not only part of God, but that God is part of man; a thing essential, like sex. We say that (in the light of actual history) if you cut off the supernatural what remains is the unnatural. We say that it is in believing ages that you get men living in the open and dancing and telling tales by the fire. We say that it is in ages of unbelief, that you get emperors dressing up as women, and gladiators, or minor poets wearing green carnations and praising unnameable things. We say that, taking ages as a whole, the wildest fantasies of superstition are nothing to the fantasies of rationalism…”

G.K. Chesterton in the Daily News quoted in Michael Coren Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton

“The killing of Salwan Momika is an outrage. He seems to have been executed for criticising Islam, for daring to desecrate the Koran. It is medieval savagery to kill a man for mocking a religion. We must defend the right to blaspheme, says Brendan O’Neill”

A classic Terrible Middle Ages attribution of a 21st-century act based on a 7th-century religion for no reason except Medieval is the worst word they can think of, in the teaser to an article on Spiked [which to be fair did not contain this tortured analogy] on X Jan. 30, 2025

“REMEMBER/ PERFORM HAND HYGIENE”

Sign I encountered just outside “DAY SURGERY WAITING ROOM” in Ottawa Hospital Riverside at 6:30 AM on a January 2025 morning, then a graphic of someone’s hands getting either soap or sanitizer to clarify this atrocious jargon [to be fair followed by the French plain-language “RAPPEL/ LAVEZ VOUS SOUVENT LES MAINS”]

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

Douglas Adams, emailed by a friend and attributed to “Mostly Harmless, 1992”

“G.K. Chesterton – there was a bright guy – said, ‘I don’t take myself seriously, but I take my work seriously’”.

Chuck Jones, the animation legend from Warner Bros. who cocreated Bugs Bunny etc., at age 80, quoted in Maclean’s June 14, 1993

“Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.”

Jeremiah 10:11 [KJV].

“delivered with the quiet dignity of a wet T-shirt competition.”

Eli Lake in The Free Press November 3, 2024 [with specific reference to Donald Trump’s political flimflam that does not so much lie on purpose as deny the very possibility of truth]

“Of his eighteen years as emperor Septimius gave twelve to war. He destroyed his rivals in a swift and savage campaigns; he razed Byzantium after four years’ siege, thereby lowering the barrier to the spreading Goths; he invaded Parthia, took Ctesiphon, annexed Mesopotamia, and hastened the fall of the Arsacid kings. In his old age, suffering from gout but fretful lest his army deteriorate through five years of peace, he led an expedition into Caledonia. After expensive victories against the Scots he withdrew into Britain, and retired to York to die (211). ‘I have been everything,’ he said, ‘and it is worth nothing.’”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ