“To say that something is ‘natural’ means not that it is inevitable, but that the potential for it exists in the genotype. This in turn implies that it is merely prudent to bear in mind the potential of that ‘natural’ behavior and act accordingly. [Robert] Wright approvingly cites Francis Bacon, who announced, ‘Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.’”
Lionel Tiger reviewing Wright's Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny in National Review March 6, 2000
“I have also never met a successful pessimist.”
William J. O’Neill, cited in The American Spectator August 1988
“It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the spat in France over whether to stick a monstrous modern spire on a restored Notre Dame cathedral reflects a civilization that, cut off from tradition, has lost the ability to believe in anything.
“A strange strand of eternal pathos runs through dreams which comes from the very loom of life itself. Dreams are, if I may so express it, like life only more so. Dreams, like life, are full of nobility and joy utterly arbitrary and incalculable. We have gratitude, but never certainty.”
G.K. Chesterton, “The Meaning of Dreams,” reprinted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2005)
Question from a student: “I’m scared of metaphysics. A friend of mine wrote an essay for another course, in which he denied the persistence of personal identity. According to my friend, since some things about me have changed during the last two years, the me of today isn’t the same as the me of two years ago. We are literally different persons. This is deeply disturbing."
Reply: "... if my personal identity has no persistence, then how could ‘I’ find it disturbing? The problem with your friend’s argument isn’t metaphysical reasoning, but flawed metaphysical reasoning... there must be a real you that persists through the changes. If that weren’t true, then it wouldn’t even make sense for you to say “I have changed” -- because at the moment of the change, “I” would have ceased to exist.... Metaphysics is just thinking carefully about what the real world is like.... Trust me. You exist.”
J. Budziszewski "Underground Thomist" July 22, 2019
“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)
"Extreme pessimism is a luxury that only the very young can afford. As you become older, pessimism becomes much more spiritually expensive, and you don’t indulge in it unless you are really convinced of what you’re saying. When you’re a 25-year-old, it looks good to say that life is just a can of worms. When you’re 55, it’s not as funny. You’ve seen a few worms by that time."
Robertson Davies, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Oct. 12, 2005