The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters  

[Incidentally, a piece of interesting trivia: this quote was quoted in one of the most famous presidential speeches in history, Reagan's "evil empire" speech. In fact, it was this quote which led into his denouncing the Soviet Union as the "evil empire"]

http://youtu.be/do0x-Egc6oA?t=2m29s

If ever you have nothing to do, and looking to have some interesting reading, just google "Ye Olde Statistician" or "TheOFloinn", just to see author Mike Flynn's contributions to various discussions on diverse blogs on the Internet. Trust me, it will be worth it.
 
Mike Flynn is a science fiction writer (and a pretty good one apparently based on the reviews- indeed, one of the blurbs on his book Eifelheim was from Orson Scott Card, someone who even I, in my near complete ignorance of science fiction, have heard of. Card's blurb stated "Eifelheim...may turn out to be the best science fiction novel this year.")  However, I do not read science fiction, so admittedly I cannot comment much there. But from an apologetics and philosophical perspective, he is wonderful to read. 

Incidentally, his blog is tofspot.blogspot.com

"Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton."

-Dean Koontz, Brother Odd (the quote is made by the protagonist of the story).

"The question is not whether the Church will survive persecution in the West. It’s whether the West will survive persecuting the Church."

The question is not whether the Church will survive persecution in the West. It’s whether the West will survive persecuting the Church. Meanwhile, in the global south and Asia, the Church continues to explode in numbers. The problem the Church faces is not decline, but insufficient numbers of vocations to handle the vast ocean of converts pouring in–including, by the way, unprecedented numbers of converts in the Islamic world.

-Mark Shea

My buddy Scott Hahn, the Bible scholar, likes to point out that the Psalter has more songs of complaint than any other kind of song. Complaining, he says, is different from grumbling. The Israelites grumbled in the desert, to each other. David complained- to God. We complain to someone we trust. Old King David wasn't just kvetching; he was complaining to a Father. He was singing the blues.

-Dion DiMucci, Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (2011)

How many times does a man need to say something before he is safe from the accusation of having said exactly the opposite?

-C.S. Lewis
"A Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger" (1958)
The Essential C.S. Lewis (edited by Lyle W. Dorsett, 1996)

[As a Catholic, I can heartily sympathize with the above quote...]

The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing.

-Theodore Roosevelt
Social Justice and Popular Rule: Essays, Addresses, and Public Statements (1923)

Prayer of Saint John Chrysostom Before Reading Sacred Scripture

O Lord Jesus Christ,
open the eyes of my heart,
that I may hear Your word
and understand and do Your will,
for I am a sojourner upon the earth.
Hide not Your commandments from me,
but open my eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of Your law.
Speak unto me the hidden and secret things
of Your wisdom.
On You do I set my hope, O my God,
that You shall enlighten
my mind and understanding with
the light of Your knowledge,
not only to cherish those things
which are written, but to do them;
that in reading the lives and sayings
of the saints I may not sin,
but that such may serve for my restoration, enlightenment
and sanctification, for the salvation of my soul,
and the inheritance of life everlasting.
For You are the enlightenment of those
who lie in darkness,
and from You comes every good deed
and every gift.

Amen.

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one."

Churchill's response to Shaw: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second.... if there is one."

Just came across a passage from the preface of Cardinal Newman's book Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851) that I find especially helpful for Catholic apologetics. While in context it refers to responding to anti-Catholic attacks from Protestant sources specifically, it would, in fact, be applicable to anti-Catholic attacks in general from other sources (such as atheists, for instance) as well. In any case, long as the passage may be compared to what I normally post on this blog, I think it is well worth posting. 

Bulverism

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third—“Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

-C.S. Lewis

"...hate the vice and love the man"

"Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain."

-St. Augustine (354-430), The City of God, Book 14, chapter 6