Points of Interest

Humour depends on good humour; it depends on not wanting to correct anything.

The establishment used to be defined by class & wealth. Today, it’s defined by attitudes & institutions. That’s why Trump & Farage are anti-establishment, while lower-paid BBC journalists & academics are part of the establishment.

Europe today has a political class like those of the Third World, hated by its citizens and despised by foreigners.

The beautiful stops the viewer in his tracks and then plants within him a desire to speak to others of what he has seen.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Man's luck is found in strange places.

I honestly believe no person in the world would drift away from the Catholic Church if they knew what it really is and what the Catholic faith is. We might go to a parish where the liturgy may be very dull, the priest may be a bad homilist … but once we know what the Catholic Church is – that the God who redeemed mankind is present – we can enter into that relationship regardless of the experiential side of the faith.

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

We are governed by morons.

The key problem that gives rise to populism in the first place is elite decay.

Great architecture has a constant quality that overrides all considerations of 'period'.

The meaning of life is, for me, the refinement of the human conscience.

War is a form of human social adaptation to circumstances.

It is the politics of pretending everything is ok when it very much isn't. It is the politics of denialism, of praying and delaying, of stealing from Peter to pay Paul, of buying people off with their own money and importing voters.