“… Clare is – or would be if she thought it out – a classical moralist after the style of Thomas Aquinas, Grotius, Hooker and Locke. She believes that behind the laws of the state there is a Natural Law. I agree with her. I hold this conception to be basic to all civilization. Without it, the actual laws of the state become an absolute, as in Hegel. They cannot be criticized because there is no norm against which they should be judged.”
“By the natural light He has shown us what means are lawful: to find out which one is efficacious He has given us brains. The rest He has left to us.”
“We never start from a tabula rasa: if we did, we should end, ethically speaking, with a tabula rasa.”
"[I]t is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects - military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden - that is what the state is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc. are simply a waste of time."
- C.S. Lewis
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