“I like a look of Agony because I know it’s true.”
Emily Dickenson quoted in Thomas Boswell How Life Imitates the World Series
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Emailed by a friend and attributed to Yogi Berra, plausibly, though it exists in various versions including "You can see a lot, just by looking" and "You can observe a lot by watchin'" and "You can observe a lot by just watching" [see for instance https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/25697/what-is-the-source-of-the-quote-you-can-see-a-lot-just-by-looking].
In a talk to the 2024 Economic Education Association of Alberta "Freedom Talk" in Red Deer, AB on July 7 I argue that a radical commitment to truth-telling, including refusing to remain silent in the face of lies, is crucial to personal and to political freedom.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the International Olympic Committee’s pseudo-apology for deliberately blaspheming the Last Supper was even more debauched than the initial performance.
“No sooner has a man’s conscience told him to doubt a certain institution than the man’s modern intelligence immediately tells him to doubt his conscience. Thus most modern revolution is in secret revolt against itself.”
G.K. Chesterton in Daily News Nov. 17 1906, quoted in “Intelligence” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 6 (July-August 2023)
“Internationalism is the death of democracy.”
G.K. Chesterton in The (NY) Sun Oct. 20 1918, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)
“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing.”
Joan Didion, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
“Most famously, there is the telegram from Gilbert, who was off on a lecture tour, to Frances in Beaconsfield: ‘Am in Market Harborough. Where should I be?’ Frances wired back her unforgettable one-word answer: ‘HOME!’ It was easier, as she later explained, to get him back and then start him off again.”
An item whose author I did not record in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #3 (Dec. 2000)