“Bill Door found a piece of chalk in the farm's old smithy, located a piece of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril toward it.THIS YOU WILL READ, he said.Cyril peered myopically at the "Cock-A Doodle-Doo" in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he'd better learn to read very, very quickly.”

“I would not employ an author to referee a Ping-Pong match. By their very nature they are biased and bloody-minded. Better put a fox in a henhouse than to ask an author to judge his peers. (in a letter to the Governor General about the GA's Literary Awards & his issue--among others--with the judging system, 1981)”

“Learning often means changing the game board, not just learning fancier strategies on the same board with the same pieces.”

“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposedbeauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on toestablish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices whichmay oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as thehand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no otherprinciple of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, everysingle piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impressupon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily andharmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably,and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”

“...Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.”

“He read reports, examined evidence, and poured more reports up the chain than the Pentagon could read. Nothing short of a human sieve. But in the end he was just one small piece on this game board called war. End of story”