“’Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?’ This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, ‘I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more like what the Christians say than what the materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I think them helpful.’ Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind…. Christianity is not a patent medicine.”

C.S. Lewis “Man or Rabbit?” in The Grand Miracle

“It would be no sort of a life if we felt entirely comfortable in it.”

P.J. Kavanaugh, quoted in The Economist May 5, 1990

“It is only the fetish of some economists (e.g., Hirshleifer, 1985) that rejects the idea that one person’s self-interest cannot include the welfare of others.”

W.T. Stanbury in Walter Block and George Lerner, eds., Breaking the Shackles: Deregulating Canadian Industry

“In 1867, Matthew Arnold heard the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the Sea of Faith.”

Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character

“Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect.”

Fr. Andrew Greeley quoted by William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review Sept. 15, 1997

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the answer to declining social trust, including on COVID lockdowns and vaccines, isn’t to shame and silence people, it’s to have an intelligent and respectful discussion. Which apparently now makes me a kook.

“The question is not whether the Catholic leadership is enlightened but whether Catholicism is true. A whole College of Cardinals filled with psychopathic tyrants provides no answer one way or the other to that question.”

Fr. Andrew Greeley quoted by William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review September 15, 1997

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man