“Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.”
A. J. P. Taylor, quoted in Globe & Mail January 20, 2003
“I’ve written in this blog numerous times about the ‘revenge of conscience’. Conscience wreaks this revenge in a particularly spectacular way in the domain of sex. We aren’t really shameless; rather, because of our shame, we make excuses. People on the left make excuses for their shameful practices by saying that now all perversions are okay (in fact, they aren’t perversions). People on the right implausibly say ‘No, only my shameful practice is okay. Yours isn’t.’ Is it any wonder that the liberal dog is winning this fight?”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“The only shadow he cast was by artificial light, and he looked it.”
Mike Hammer’s internal monologue in Mickey Spillane My Gun is Quick [regarding the pimp Cobbie Bennett]
“There is a kind of work which any man can do, but from which many men shrink, generally because it is very hard work, sometimes because they fear it will lead them whither they do not wish to go. It is called thinking.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News July 10, 1915, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #4 (Jan.-Feb. 2008)
“To give the appearance of doing wrong, when it could have been avoided, is to do wrong. This used to be called the sin of scandal, but we have misappropriated that useful word and put it to different purposes.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“as LBJ’s Liz Carpenter was fond of citing, ‘Resume Speed, Tx.’”
William Safire Before the Fall [on the subject of small towns].
“Some natural selection buffs claim that the human mind is just a meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind. Hold on a moment. If it were, then there would be no reason for confidence in any conclusion of reasoning whatsoever – including the conclusion that our minds are a meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
“History presents us with two kinds of leaders, those who did more harm than good, and those whose names we can’t remember.”
David Warren in Ottawa Citizen January 2, 2000