46 Quotes by J. Budziszewski

Like other people, anthropologists may see only what they want to see, even when what they want to see is nothing.

Even a liar's speech expresses something true; it may not tell us the state of the world, but it tells us the state of his heart.

How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from prior knowledge. We just know it. The knowledge is "underived.

A wise man governs his eyes, not because it is wrong to delight in beauty, but because otherwise his delight may suffer transmutation into something very different.

If he makes humanity God and yet cries out against God's inhumanity, it is clear who has really been accused.

Or perhaps the syndrome we are witnessing is preemptive capitulation: If we reduce our conscience to rubble before the bad men get here, they will have nothing to destroy.

In the same way, filling a cavity restores to the tooth its natural function of chewing. Healing does not transcend our nature; it respects it.

I believe in civility. But it is not a requirement of civility to pretend there is no war.

To penetrate the unknown, the mind must begin with what is known already. George Orwell wrote that "We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." This book is an attempt at re-statement.