Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons.

To raise a child is to submit to a staggering amount of work, much of which is deeply unpleasant. It would be crazy to have children if they weren't so damned important.

when fertility rates began collapsing in the late 1960s, another demographic transition was occurring, the result of a fundamental restructuring: People no longer put children at the center of their lives. Instead, they put themselves there.

A man with no children can easily be lulled into a sense that time is standing still. It's not. It's marching past us, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear.

Anyone can dig a ditch. There's no way to dig smarter. Or dig faster. Having a baby is like being assigned to dig a ditch. That goes all the way to the horizon.

If you do believe in God, and your first instinct in all things must be gratitude: for creation, or love, for mercy.

Aristotle deemed courage to be the first virtue, because it makes all the other possible.

Aquinas called prudence the queen of virtues, saying that she gently guides all the rest.

No single virtue is, on its own, necessarily virtuous.

Believe it or not, philosophy has consequences.