James V. Schall > Quotes

“I often think . . . that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses, nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton, or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine, and Pascal.”
― James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing

“There is an intimate connection between our moral life and our intellectual life. Sometimes I think the history of our times can be described as an argument about whether or not this connection is true.”
― James V. Schall, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning

“No serious book lover will ever die having read every book he has managed to collect. This is not a sign of dilatoriness but of eagerness, anticipation.”
― James V. Schall, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning

“Why read? Because we are given more than we are.”
― James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning

“Hell is a consequence of one’s own free choice. It would not exist if free choice did not exist or, better, if free choice were not used badly. It is not imposed arbitrarily from the outside by pitiless gods but grows logically from inside a human soul. It is the result of someone’s making himself what he wants to be, not what God wants him to be.”
― James V. Schall, Reasonable Pleasures: The Strange Coherences of Catholicism

“No one will seek the highest [things] if he believes that there is no truth, that nothing is his fault, and that government will guarantee his wants.”
― James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing

“In a sense, we can tell a lot about anyone by looking at what books, if any, he reads, at what books are on his shelves. . . . I have always found books to be helpful, yet they must be good books.”
― James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning

“Self-discipline is the beginning of wisdom, not its end. When we have discovered the purpose for which self-discipline exists, we will, if we are sane, hardly recall anything about self-discipline because it has enabled us to become free to see and do so much else.”
― James V. Schall, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning

“The truth will not only “make us free” but it is itself free. We all come in fact to know the same truth, otherwise we could not communicate at all with one another. This is why the modern-day denial of truth is, at the same time, a denial of real human communication and, consequently, in place of truth, an exhalation of power.”
― James V. Schall, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning

“Thinking is itself, however, an adventure.”
― James V. Schall (Liberal Learning)

“At first sight, it seems that something, almost anything, must be done about our situation. But it is the genius of Pieper to see that this activist, busy motion is the wrong starting point. Before we can pretend to do anything about the present, we must know what we are, what the world is, and yes, what God is. Construction of a civilization that knows little or nothing of these deeper realities can only make things worse.”
― James V. Schall

“If we do not voluntarily keep our promises to God to read, He will see to their fulfillment some other, less pleasant, way. God thinks reading important!”
― James V. Schall, The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking

“Revelation, I argue, leads to the completion and fulfillment of political philosophy, not in any necessary or artificial way, but as an intelligible response to valid questions posed in the discipline itself. Revelation is a gift; it does not arise from human sources. It is not something that could be demanded or commanded. It is a rational gift. . . .Aquinas remains a key to the compatibility of reason and revelation. (At the Limits of Political Philosophy)”
― James V. Schall, SJ

“Learning is very often a question of whether someone has his soul in order, whether he can be attracted by "what is." Great things will not be seen by those whose souls are not ordered. I did not say that first. Aristotle did. But I do not mind repeating it, as if I were the first to discover it. (The Life of the Mind)”
― James V. Schall, SJ