We have become a society that can't self-correct that can't address its obvious problems that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity and indeed of every age in the world have passed through this fiery persecution.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies evasions folly hatred and schizophrenia.