What could be a more Canadian way to indulge in the national preoccupation with perceptions - honest, hilarious, huffy or high-minded - of this country and its inhabitants?

The greatest service we can do the common man is to abolish him and make all men uncommon.

Everywhere I go I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making.

What is needed is the development in men of that particular type of skill which will enable them to make social use of knowledge already in their possession; enable them to apply simple, sometimes self-evident, truths to the guidance of their common life.

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion.

The evil was not in either ideal; the evil was in the attempt to impose that ideal by force upon others.