What if the best thing that ever happened to you…
Was not being rich, powerful or famous?
Values
A politics of affection
Affection, in the sense that I mean it, is a broad kind of love: a gentler, more abiding, more generous way of feeling-toward, and of… Read More »A politics of affection
Edmund Burke on virtue, experience and political leadership
Words from the past for the present. … no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any… Read More »Edmund Burke on virtue, experience and political leadership
Michael Oakeshott on political activity and continuity
Those societies which retain, in changing circumstances, a lively sense of their own identity and continuity (which are without that hatred of their own experience… Read More »Michael Oakeshott on political activity and continuity
Edmund Burke on Circumstances and Political Principles; or, Context is King
I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society [the English Revolutionary Society, which wrote… Read More »Edmund Burke on Circumstances and Political Principles; or, Context is King
Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) on getting the right bus
Good or bad, “they’ll take you to places you’d never go alone”.
Love and Respect
Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of… Read More »Love and Respect
Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our future machine overlords
Arendt wrote the prologue to The Human Condition not long after the successful launch of Sputnik raised the first realistic prospect of humanity taking its… Read More »Hannah Arendt on science, language, politics and our future machine overlords
G. K. Chesterton on Hearsay Evidence
See also: GK Chesterton on HG Wells and the function of an open mindFools’ Money (2): Counter ArgumentChesterton’s Fence (at Farnham Street)
Lesslie Newbigin and Michael Polanyi on objectivity, personal knowledge, nihilism and tradition
Newbigin was a sharp but affectionate observer of Western culture, a highly educated insider with an extra layer of perspective that came from almost 40… Read More »Lesslie Newbigin and Michael Polanyi on objectivity, personal knowledge, nihilism and tradition