No Apologies Quotes

“I am saying rather that men did not behave as men are wont to do, in part because of the essential change in political bodies, where everyone senses that protection at all costs, rather than the good and bloody battle, is the rule of the day. As soon as someone says, “You want 200,000 people to die,” the chance for a discussion is over, because the rejoinder, “You are speaking like a coward and an ass,” is no longer possible.”
― Anthony Esolen, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men

“Many a boy languishes in school because he finds no arrow there. Things are staid, routine. Perhaps there are arrows to pick up now and again, if you are the sort of boy who will look for them and not be too discouraged, and if the arrows available are fit for the kind of shooting you want to do. But the failure of boys in school—not this boy or that boy, but boys by the millions, despite the fact, attested by empirical investigation and the evidence of history, that they are at least the equals of their sisters in intelligence—suggests that the schools are quite simply bad for them. They stunt their growth. Intellectually and practically, the boys are like pale and spindly plants that have been kept indoors all the days of their lives. And yet, obviously, we need these boys; it is criminally negligent to deny it. Consider how many young black men, in particular, are languishing, because their schools are—at their best—no great shakes, and because they lack the fathers in the home who would train them up in skill and strength. Everywhere you turn your eye in the United States, you will find ugliness, disrepair, vandalism, buildings left to rot—and unemployed or underemployed young men, disheartened, not worth marrying, and ready to cause trouble, since they can cause so little else.”
― Anthony Esolen, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men