Home > Author > Jonathan V. Last
1 " Aristotle deemed courage to be the first virtue, because it makes all the other possible. "
― Jonathan V. Last
2 " To raise a child is to submit to a staggering amount of work, much of which is deeply unpleasant. It would be crazy to have children if they weren't so damned important. "
― Jonathan V. Last , What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster
3 " Justice is the virtue we 'd rather have done unto others than practiced on ourselves. "
4 " Believe it or not, philosophy has consequences. "
5 " Virtues are the internal qualities that allow us to be our best selves and enable us to lead complete and fulfilling lives. "
6 " The modern virtues fail because they concern the outer self, the human facade, the part of ourselves the world sees most readily – while the classical virtues form an organizing framework for our inner selves… for our souls. "
7 " If you do believe in God, and your first instinct in all things must be gratitude: for creation, or love, for mercy. "
8 " One of the mitigating benefits of children is that they make a Lego habit more respectable. "
9 " Anyone can dig a ditch. There's no way to dig smarter. Or dig faster. Having a baby is like being assigned to dig a ditch. That goes all the way to the horizon. "
10 " when fertility rates began collapsing in the late 1960s, another demographic transition was occurring, the result of a fundamental restructuring: People no longer put children at the center of their lives. Instead, they put themselves there. "
11 " A man with no children can easily be lulled into a sense that time is standing still. It's not. It's marching past us, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear. "
12 " No single virtue is, on its own, necessarily virtuous. "
13 " It’s evident to anyone paying attention that zero tolerance equals 100 percent stupidity. But you have to understand that zero-tolerance rules aren’t about protecting kids. They exist to protect the adults who are too cowardly to make judgments. "
― Jonathan V. Last , The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell
14 " A man with no children can easily be lulled into the sense that time is standing still. It is not. It is marching past you, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear. It’s depressing. But also necessary. Because it means that your time on earth won’t sneak past you. And if you’re living well, it helps you focus on not wasting the time you have. "
― Jonathan V. Last , The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You'll Ever Love
15 " It’s not hard, then, to see how the simple message of a Jewish carpenter in Nazareth became so popular. Jesus didn’t talk much about justice. He talked about mercy. He talked about forgiveness. As his followers see it, Jesus is the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, Universal Circuit. And he’s a pretty lenient jurist. "
16 " I wasn’t interested in becoming a man. I was interested in becoming a more dashing, brilliant, charismatic, mysterious, attractive-to-girls version of what my suburban, television-age upbringing had turned me into—which was basically a collection of appetites. "
17 " The modern university is the institution through which the next generation’s elite is formed. It inculcates the two essential, nonnegotiable principles of the American ruling class: consumerism and relativism. "
18 " Justice is something people do to other people, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from history, it’s that most things people do to other people aren’t very nice. "
19 " Appearing in Mummy and Daddy’s room in the middle of the night and claiming to be “scared” is strictly verboten. "
20 " When the worry about the baby crying ceases, the worry about the baby not breathing begins. "
