"You say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man. But what God has been to man is man’s absolute superior, and man cannot be his own superior…. So when you say you want man to be to himself what God has been to man hitherto, you mean you want some men to be to other men what God has been to man. You want some men to be the absolute superiors of others. I assume that you want to be in the former group and not in the latter."

J. Budziszewski in What We Can’t Not Know [part of his Platonic dialogue with a skeptic].

In some sense the French Revolution was “the black desperate battle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment, - a battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and Darkness that was in themselves as in others: this is the Reign of Terror."

Thomas Carlyle The French Revolution

"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he does not know more."

William Cowper

"I won’t quarrel with Ralph Wood’s judgment that my book [The Naked Public Square] was intended as a corrective. Yet there was also a remedy proposed, and Wood says it has failed. I would prefer to say it has not been tried, but I admit that that may be something like failing."

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #147 (November 2004)

"If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."

T.S. Eliot "The Idea of a Christian Society" quoted in Russell Kirk The Politics of Prudence 

In my latest piece in C2C Journal I say that while "legislating morality" has a distinctly Victorian and reactionary feel we actually do it all the time, often on "progressive" grounds, so we need to think clearly about why and how we do it.

“If ever God is banished from the world so that even His image is eradicated from the human mind, we will cease to be human and become merely very clever animals—and our ultimate fate will be too horrible to contemplate."

Father Karl Rahner, SJ, quoted by Paul Johnson in “The human race: success or failure?” in The New Criterion Vol. 25 (Nov. 2006)