“For where men have made the earth that is trodden underfoot, and have largely veiled the heavens themselves, it is but natural that they should think that they have made everything, and that it is they who rule it.”
― Come Rack! Come Rope!
― Come Rack! Come Rope!
“In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy.”
― Lord of the World
― Lord of the World
“a secularist colleague of mine once assured me that he didn’t need to bother reading writers like Aquinas, since he “already knew” that they must be wrong – though judging from his grasp of what such writers mean by “God” (he confidently trotted out a few stupid anthropomorphisms, tiresome comparisons to the Easter bunny, etc.), it was obvious that he knew no such thing. It was like trying to discuss Titian with a three-year-old who thinks painting is something you do with your fingers.”
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
“What Hitchens should have written is: “I wouldn’t know the difference between conceptualism and realism, essentially and accidentally ordered causal series, Aristotle and Hume, etc., even if I were intellectually honest; but then, neither will the book reviewer at the New York Times, so who cares?”
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
“And needless to say, smugness is half the fun of being a liberal (the other half being the tearing down of everything one’s ancestors, and one’s betters generally, worked so hard to build).”
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
― The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
Oliver’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Oliver’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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