Sunday, August 19, 2012

"the loss of a geocentric cosmology of nested crystalline spheres was not in any intrinsic way a fundamental break in human self-understanding"

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     "The interesting and complex story that runs through the lives of Bruno, Galileo, and their learned contemporaries is not, as Rowl...
Friday, August 17, 2012

"How is it that a Jewish atheist is not thought to have left the Jewish people, but the Jewish Catholic has?"

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     Hadley Arkes, in Marcia Segelstein, "Courage and conversion:  an interview with Hadley Arkes," Touchstone 24, no. 2 (March/Ap...
Wednesday, August 15, 2012

"although they had borrowed the letter of the law, they could not carry over the spirit that gives it life."

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     "The Constitution of the United States resembles those fine creations of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their in...

"A false notion which is clear and precise will always have more power in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved."

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     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.VIII.22 ("Why the federal system is not practicable for all nations, and ...

"Great wealth and extreme poverty, capital cities of large size, a lax morality, selfishness, and antagonism of interests are the dangers which almost inevitably arise from the magnitude of states."

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     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.VIII.21 ("Advantages of the federal system in general, and its special uti...
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The "conclusion that [the] death [penalty] is irrelevant to rehabilitation . . . stems from changes in our understanding of rehabilitation."

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     "Courts and scholars have long concluded that [rehabilitation] does not [apply in the capital context] — that death is completely...
Sunday, August 12, 2012

Be not afraid!

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"Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power[!]  Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Chri...