“When I tell an ordinary citizen that he must not steal, I should be in a position to answer the question if he wonders why. If I tell my government that it must be modest, what do I do in the face of the same question? For—believe me—governments want to misuse their power more than ordinary citizens want to steal. My elected representatives want to steal from me more than my next-door neighbor does. That being the case, they must be told not to—which is a strong ethical requirement. As such, like all ethical requirements, it requires transcendental grounding.”

Mere Christendom, p. 120

“The aboriginal sin is not sexual, but is rather pride and insolence. Sex gets involved soon enough, but the sexual issues are just the battlefield. The conflict is over mastery.”

Virgins and Volcanoes, p. 21

“Without an exhaustive rule through the predestinating love of the Father, unbelieving men will always see a job opening. They will want to fill that gap. They mimic the Father’s omnipotence, which is where we get the totalitarian part. They also try to mimic His love, which is how we get the tolerance farce. And so it is that we find ourselves suffocating under this totalitolerance.”

Mere Christendom, p. 118

“We cannot understand the first thing about the Creation, or the Fall, or the redemption accomplished by Christ until we first grasp the fixed immensity that is nature.”

Virgins and Volcanoes, p. 19

“Someone might plead necessity, and say that administrative law is too extensive and too complex for a legislature to understand, still less to pass. The reply to this is simple—if a set of regulations is too burdensome for the legislature to pass, then it is too burdensome for us to live under.”

Mere Christendom, p. 117