“Recall the recipe for unicorn stew: first, get a unicorn.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #146 October 2004 [ridiculing Robert Reich’s formula for liberal electoral victory in the U.S.]
“We have been accused of hostility to the scientist, when we are merely hostile to the materialist.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News May 9, 1931, quoted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 2022
“men dying in agonies to find a place [the North Pole] where no man can live – a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting-place of some lines that do not exist.”
G.K. Chesterton in Heretics, quoted by Mary DeMarco in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 #1 (September 2000) [about how we laugh at men who died looking for Christ’s tomb but celebrate those who died looking for the North Pole].
“The fact that I suppress what I know and pretend not to know it, even though I do know it, does not keep my buried knowledge from influencing my actions – but, since I suppress it, it distorts my thinking and influences my actions in a perverse way.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn
In my latest Epoch Times column, I condemn Ontario public-sector unions who support pro-Hamas protests, which is not merely a violation of their mandate but also a gross affront to their supposedly progressive values.
“For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.”
“Larry Eisenberg (1919-), U.S. science-fiction writer” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail March 16, 2011
“Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it’s just a cosmic coincidence. For many TikTok users, the moon phase trend affirms that they did find their soulmates. TikTok users are comparing the moon phases of the days they were born to those of their significant others — if the phases fit together to make a perfect full moon, according to the trend, they’re soulmates. If there are gaps between the overlapped moons, the relationship is supposedly doomed to fail.”
NBC March 6, 2023 [and filed in my notes under “How we laugh at the superstitious past”]
“There are a great many truths that we can’t help knowing at some level. Even so, we may not be aware of knowing them, we can deny knowing them, and we can pretend to ourselves that we don’t know them.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]