The devil Screwtape on prayer:

Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never led them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

-The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (Letter IV)

Many otherwise well-educated people have long taken this picture for granted. [Complete lack of science in the Middle Ages] No one has diffused it more widely than astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996), whose television series Cosmos drew an audience estimated at half a billion. In his 1980 book by the same name, a timeline of astronomy from Greek antiquity to the present left between the fifth and the late fifteenth centuries a familiar thousand-year blank labelled as a “poignant lost opportunity for mankind.” The timeline reflected not the state of knowledge in 1980 but Sagan’s own “poignant lost opportunity” to consult the library of Cornell University, where he taught. In it, Sagan would have discovered large volumes devoted to the medieval history of his own field, some of them two hundred years old. He would also have learnt that the alleged medieval vacuum spawned the two institutions in which he spent his life: the observatory as a research institution (Islamic civilization) and the university (Latin Europe).

-The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 2 Medieval Science, ed. David C. Lindberg & Michael H. Shank, CUP, New York, ppb. 2015 pp.9-10

H/T Mike Flynn

The 50 Greatest Yogi Berra Quotes

Popular sins are never regarded by the people as sins ; they are never called sins. Terms are invented to describe them, which fall upon the ear without harshness, and which, whenever uttered, give no alarm to the moral sense. This is what is called in Scripture, the transformation of Satan into an angel of light.

-Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Llyod Garrison

[H/T Nicole DeMille]

Thus, it is not unusual to meet people who think that "not to believe in any," or "not to adhere firmly to any assertion as unshakably true in itself," is a primary condition required of democratic citizens in order to be tolerant of one another and to live in peace with one another. May I say that these people are in fact the most intolerant people, for if perchance they were to believe in something as unshakably true, they would feel compelled, by the same stroke, to impose by force and coercion their own belief on their co-citizens. The only remedy they have found to get rid of their abiding tendency to fanaticism is to cut themselves off from truth.

-Jacques Maritain, Truth and Human Fellowship

[H/T St. Thomas Aquinas Facebook page]

"Each citizen has a private philosophy and a private code. That's the trouble. And when you've invented the code or the philosophy for yourself, you suddenly find at some moment of emergency that it doesn't bind you. How could it? The stream doesn't rise higher than the source."

-Fr. Ronald Knox

" [...] principles will develop themselves, beyond the arbitrary points of which you are so fond, and by which they have hitherto been limited, like prisoners on parole [...]"

-John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, Volume One (1871)

"If you want to know who actually has the power in our society and who is actually marginalized, ask which ideas get you sponsorships from Google and Pepsi and which get you fired."

I am also miffed by the use of "person" for "man," since it denies rational thought to women and reserves it exclusively to weremen. (cf. in English men-tal, min-d, also mankind, etc.; in German mann as the genderless pronoun. Hence, "a rational being.") Adult males were once referred to as "wera," see also Latin vir, Irish fir, words like vir-ile, vir-tue, etc. Instead of changing every word with the suffix -man, just give males back their prefixes and give them a unique designator of their own.

-Mike Flynn

Our understanding of the medieval period has changed dramatically in the last fifty years. Although one occasionally still hears a self-important scientist speak of the Dark Ages, modern views have long since overthrown such simplicities. An age that was once thought to be static, brutal and benighted is now understood as dynamic and swiftly changing: an age where knowledge was sought and valued, where great universities were born, and learning fostered; where technology was enthusiastically advanced; where social relations were in flux; where trade was international; where the general level of violence was often less deadly than it is today. As for the old reputation of medieval times as a dark time of parochialism, religious prejudice and mass slaughter, the record of the twentieth century must lead any thoughtful observer to conclude that we are in no way superior.

In fact, the conception of a brutal medieval period was an invention of the Renaissance, whose proponents were at pains to emphasize a new spirit, even at the expense of the facts. If a benighted medieval world has proven a durable misconception, it may be because it confirms a cherished contemporary belief- that our species always moves forward to ever better and more enlightened ways of life. This belief is utter fantasy, but it dies hard. It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.

-Michael Crichton (Acknowledgements", Timeline, 1999)

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic"
That can be turned into today's world:
"School shooting is a tragedy; baby killing is a statistic"

-Commenter Darrin on this article

Meanwhile, the religious world little thinks whither its opinions are leading; and will not discover that it is adoring a mere abstract name or a vague creation of the mind for the Ever-living Son, till the defection of its members from the faith startle it, and teach it that the so-called religion of the heart, without orthodoxy of doctrine, is but the warmth of a corpse, real for a time, but sure to fail.

-John Henry Newman