“The things I like arguing about are absolute things; whether a proof is logical or whether a practice is just.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Dec. 17, 1927, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)

“one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child’s view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking. We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence. Children certainly do not, and cannot, understand it – if, indeed, anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask.”

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren How to Read a Book

“Nothing can be clearer than that we require a story to explain to ourselves why we are here and what our future is to be, and many other things, including where authority resides.”

Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

“I refer to those who have fallen under the devilish spell of what is vaguely called ‘postmodernism,’ and in particular a subdivision of it sometimes called ‘deconstructionism.’… in this way of understanding things, language is under deep suspicion and is even thought to be delusional. Jean Baudrillard, a Frenchman, of all things, tells us that not only does language falsely represent reality, but there is no reality to represent. (Perhaps this explains, at long last, the indifferent French resistance to the German invasion of their country in World War II: They didn’t believe it was real.) In an earlier time, the idea that language is incapable of mapping reality would have been considered nonsense, if not a form of mental illness. In fact, it is a form of mental illness. Nonetheless, in our own time the ideas has become an organizing principle of prestigious academic departments. You can get a Ph.D. in this sort of thing.”

Neil Postman Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

“Anyone can learn from a good teacher. The real test is being able to learn from a bad one.”

J. Budziszewski “Underground Thomist” Feb. 25, 2019

Here’s a video from the past. It’s a talk I gave at the Augustine College Summer Seminar in June 2019 so I’m tardy making it available. And it’s about the Middle Ages which were, far too many people think, necessarily awful because they were long ago and old is bad and new is good. In fact there are a great many modern horrors that would have appalled people in the Middle Ages and one of them is widespread ignorance about the period.

Sorry to take so long to get around to editing and posting it. Life got in the way.

"If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we’d be too simple to understand it."

Emerson Pugh, quoted on www.hound-dog-media.com

“The sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener.”

G.K. Chesterton, quoted in an editorial in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008).