J. Budziszewski > Quotes

“To be evil at all, Satan needs good things he can abuse, things like intelligence, power and will. Those good things come from God.”
― J. Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College

“...a marriage with Christ at the center of it pulls you right out of yourself. It teaches each partner, the husband and the wife, to forget about self for a while in care and sacrifice for the other. We come to ourselves by losing ourselves.”
― J. Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College

“Depraved conscience turns out to be as different from genuine ignorance as it is from honest recognition.”
― J. Budziszewski

“We may add that it is not an act of justice but of foolish injustice to pretend the sexes are the same. Justice is exercised in respectfully providing for the due needs of each.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“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.”
― J. Budziszewski, On the Meaning of Sex

“I believe in civility. But it is not a requirement of civility to pretend there is no war.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“Only good was created. Every evil thing is a good thing ruined. There are no other ways to get an evil thing.”
― J Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“Jesus, I am sorry.”
― J. Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College

“He is what He is and there was never a time when he wasn't.”
― J. Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College

“Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair."

"Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how seriously people take you.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. GEORGE ORWELL”
― J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law

“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.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“Pleasure comes naturally as a by-product of pursuing something else, like the good of another person, and the best way to ruin pleasure is to make it your goal.”
― J. Budziszewski, On the Meaning of Sex

“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.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“The goods of fidelity, for example, are plain and concrete to the man who has not strayed, but they are faint, like mathematical abstractions, to the one who is addicted to other men's wives.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“As candle lights candle, [the spouses's] desire for each other kindles a desire for the Love of which their love is but a reflection.”
― J. Budziszewski, On the Meaning of Sex

“The virtue of tolerance is relatively new to political debate; Aristotle did not discuss it. From the way the debate is usually framed, however, one gets the impression that all one has to do to achieve tolerance is to avoid the vice of narrowminded repressiveness. On the contrary, like other virtues, tolerance is opposed by not one vice but two, with grave dangers in each direction.5 The diagram should look not like this: Intolerance Tolerance but like this: Narrowminded Repressiveness—Tolerance—Soft-headed Indulgence”
― J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law

“I mention this only because it seems to be a real obstacle for contemporary people. We don’t want the freedom of the creature but the freedom of the Creator—not freedom to be good but freedom to determine the good. Maybe this is not so new after all, for it was the first temptation: to be “like God, knowing good and evil”.”
― J Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it. The first one we owe to our creation. The second we owe to our fall.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“Besides, morality is not about whether the human race survives, but about what kind of survival it gets. We marry; guppies don't. We don't eat our young; they do. Yet neither species is in danger of extinction.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“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.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“In order to avoid believing in just one God we are now asked to believe in an infinite number of universes, all of them unobservable just because they are not part of ours. The principle of inference seems to be not Occam's Razor but Occam's Beard: "Multiply entities unnecessarily.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“An unsound thinker goes where his motives and interests invite him; a sound thinker goes where the argument takes him.”
― J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law

“Of course there is such a thing as too much doubt, for we ought to accept what is true. But there is also such a thing as proper doubt, for we ought not accept what is false. The possibility of doubt is inherent in the longing to understand, and nothing less than complete and perfect knowledge can satisfy the mind. We do not possess such knowledge here on earth; it is reserved for the beatific vision. Until then, doubt will be with us. This is...why it is so unreasonable to trust only what cannot be doubted, as Descartes proposed, because everything can be doubted. We should believe, not what we cannot doubt, but what we have the best reasons to believe.”
― J. Budziszewski, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law

“The unitive capacities of the spouses don't exist for nothing; they exist for motherhood and fatherhood. That is the matrix in which they develop, for children change us in a way we desperately need to be changed. They wake us up, they wet their diapers, they depend on us utterly. Willy-nilly, they knock us out of our selfish habits and force us to live sacrificially for others; they are the necessary and natural continuation of the shock to our selfishness which is initiated by matrimony itself.”
― J. Budziszewski

“When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“What your body does is unrelated to your heart. Don't believe it. The same survey reports that hooking up commonly takes place when both participants are drinking or drunk, and it's not hard to guess the reason why: After a certain amount of this, you may need to get drunk to go through with it.”
― J. Budziszewski, On the Meaning of Sex

“To many people today, however, rights are something to protect us against the demands of morality.”
― J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law