“ In the modern era, many thinkers began to mistrust faith, viewing it as 'blind' and an enemy of reason. Their watchword was 'reason alone.' One of the difficulties of this stance is that reason cannot… J. Budziszewski
“ The unitive capacities of the spouses don't exist for nothing; they exist for motherhood and fatherhood. That is the matrix in which they develop, for children change us in a way we desperately need t… J. Budziszewski
“ Besides, morality is not about whether the human race survives, but about what kind of survival it gets. We marry; guppies don't. We don't eat our young; they do. Yet neither species is in danger of e… J. Budziszewski
“ To be evil at all, Satan needs good things he can abuse, things like intelligence, power and will. Those good things come from God. J. Budziszewski
“ Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving. J. Budziszewski
“ If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to e… J. Budziszewski
“ If he makes humanity God and yet cries out against God's inhumanity, it is clear who has really been accused. J. Budziszewski
“ Or perhaps the syndrome we are witnessing is preemptive capitulation: If we reduce our conscience to rubble before the bad men get here, they will have nothing to destroy. J. Budziszewski
“ How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from pr… J. Budziszewski
“ A wise man governs his eyes, not because it is wrong to delight in beauty, but because otherwise his delight may suffer transmutation into something very different. J. Budziszewski
“ That is how sin works. Having nothing in itself by which to convince, on what other resources but good and truth can it draw to make itself attractive and plausible? We must use the natural law to rec… J. Budziszewski
“ Atheist: 'I hear the voice of conscience, but I deny the reality of God.' St. Thomas: 'That is like listening to someone speak, but denying that anyone is there.' Atheist: 'That's right; nobody is.' S… J. Budziszewski
“ In order to avoid believing in just one God we are now asked to believe in an infinite number of universes, all of them unobservable just because they are not part of ours. The principle of inference… J. Budziszewski
“ If all meaning were relative, then the meanings of the terms in the proposition "All meaning is relative" would be relative. Therefore the proposition "All meaning is relative" destroys itself. It is… J. Budziszewski
“ The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription. J. Budziszewski
“ The goods of fidelity, for example, are plain and concrete to the man who has not strayed, but they are faint, like mathematical abstractions, to the one who is addicted to other men's wives. J. Budziszewski
“ Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair." "Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how ser… J. Budziszewski
“ Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin t… J. Budziszewski
“ In the same way, filling a cavity restores to the tooth its natural function of chewing. Healing does not transcend our nature; it respects it. J. Budziszewski
“ Even the suicide desires his own good: he wrongly imagines that he would be better off dead. The moral problem is not that we love ourselves but that we love ourselves the wrong way. J. Budziszewski
