The purpose of an open mind, [Chesterton] said, is like the purpose of an open mouth: that it might be shut again on something solid. Yes, we must be free to ask questions. But when we hear a good answer we must be prepared to recognize it as such, and not be so keen on keeping all the questions open that we shy away from an answer because we so like having an open mind. That is the way to intellectual, as well as spiritual, starvation.

Moral effort needs mental effort, and the mental effort needs to be focused on that victory and turned into prayer for the victory to be applied today and tomorrow. The sacraments will help here, but spiritual guidance and counsel will help a great deal too.

The shallow social and political alternatives bequeathed to contemporary western society by the Enlightenment and its aftermath, in which every issue stands either to left or to the right on some hypothetical spectrum, and every political question can be answered in terms of 'for' or 'against' — this trivialized world of thought cannot cope with the complexities of real life either in the first or the twenty-first century.

Education comes from within you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.

When a problem comes along, study it until you are completely knowledgeable. Then find that weak sopt, break the problem apart, and the rest will be easy.

The life of the law has not been logic but experience.

Reason, therefore, demonstrates that external events do not depend on us, but that it is our own business to use them in this way or the opposite, having received reason as a judge and an investigator of the manner in which we ought to meet those events that come from without. 6.

The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life.

An "open mind" can be an "empty head," and "tolerance" can be indistinguishable from believing nothing. These are no help in finding honest answers to honest and important questions.

For while we may debate our freedom to choose, there is no doubt that we are not free not to choose.

More importantly, they show that the best answer to the challenge is not through improved technology but through deeper theology.