Quotes
We provide these quotes for your edification. Many of them are powerful, others insightful. However, all of them do not speak the truth. See, for example, the Stupid/Bad/Untruthful/Absurd category. Enjoy these concise insights.
Categories
Freedom/Liberty/Bondage/Slavery
Military/Battle/War/Conflict/Offense-Defense/Sports
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Bible:
“The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God, and the spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”
-- President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
“I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying 'this is fiction.'”
-- Sir Ian McKellen, gay British actor
“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book.”
-- President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.”
– John Jay (1745-1829), Founding Father and first US Chief Justice
“Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future.”
-- President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.”
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and socialist
“[T]o argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt.”
-- Jon Meacham, editor, in a "Newsweek" editorial dated 12/15/08
“While that [the Bible] is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans.”
-- New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Vicki Gene Robinson, “‘Gay’ bishop doesn’t plan to use Bible at inaugural event” Associated Press - 1/12/2009 10:20:00 AM
“The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”
-- Sir Frederic Kenyon (1863-1952), British paleographer, biblical and classical scholar, and Professor in “The Bible and Archaeology” (NY: Harper, 1940), p. 288.
“The real concern is with a thousandth part of the entire text.”
-- Archibald T. Robertson (1895-1934), American Greek scholar, in "An Intro to Textual Criticism of the New Testament" (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1925), p. 22.
“In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.”
-- Bart Ehrman (b. 1955), UNC-Chapel Hill chairman of Religious Studies, an agnostic and Bible critic in "Misquoting Jesus" (NY: HarperOne), p. 55.
Children/Families:
“How can there be too many children? That's like saying there are too many flowers.”
-- Mother Teresa (1910-1997), Catholic missionary in India
“The steps my child will most likely follow are the ones I thought I covered up.”
--Anonymous
“You know I need a daddy, or I can't be a child.”
-- Anonymous daughter conceived by donor insemination to her mother.
“One of the most reliable predicators of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests on a single question: does he have a man in his life to look up to? Too often, the answer is no.”
-- Newsweek article, 01.06
“Children have a much better chance of growing up if their parents have done so first.”
-- Anonymous
“In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes [high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births] mean that the family is in crisis. In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”
-- Arie Hoekman, leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), speaking at a colloquium at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City (LifeSiteNews.com 2/3/09)
Christianity:
“I do not believe there are any new objections to be discovered to the truth of Christianity. Men may argue ingeniously against our faith, but what can they say in defense of their own?”
-- Francis Scott Key (1780-1843), "Star Spangled Banner" author
“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German theologian
“There is now an emerging acceptance of biblical ethics on a global scale.”
--Prabhu Guptara, UBS Bank, Zurich, Switzerland
“He who introduces into public office the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
-- CA Gov. Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“The gospel started in Palestine as a relationship, went to Greece where it became an idea, went to Rome where it became an institution, and came to America where it became an enterprise.”
-- Dr. Richard Halverson, Senate Chaplain (1916-1995)
“The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. For the most part, it hasn't even been tried.”
-- Richard Altork, American missionary
“Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls along the ground directed against that which is elevated.”
-- Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosopher in Anti-Christ.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
-- C. S. Lewis, author (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
Church:
“The current attitude of the church toward the power of prayer borders on criminal negligence.”
-- Robert E. Speer (1867-1947), American missionary
“After my study of today's church, my conclusion is that the church is politely bored with God.”
-- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), American pastor and writer
“80% of the resources of the Church worldwide are found in the American Church.”
-- Dr. Clive Calver, President, World Vision
“The meetings least attended in our churches today are the ones whose only attraction is God.”
-- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), American pastor and writer
“The gospel started in Palestine as a relationship, went to Greece where it became an idea, went to Rome where it became an institution, and came to America where it became an enterprise.”
-- Dr. Richard Halverson, Senate Chaplain (1916-1995)
“I want to go [to a church] and ask someone to help me say some prayers.”
--Paul M. Johnson III, before his father was beheaded by terrorists in Saudi Arabia
“Spiritual formation cannot, in the nature of the case, be a 'private' thing, because it is a matter of whole-life transformation. You need to seek out others in your community who are pursuing the renovation of the heart.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 114
“The brokenness in the church, the divisions that abound, and our consistent resistance to the God design of restored relationships and practical unity is our (the church’s) truly great sin. It is the world’s roadblock of all roadblocks to belief. On the outside, it is the greatest single roadblock to power and credibility in our engagement of the world. Inside the church, it is the greatest impediment to the joy, refreshment and fulfillment God intends for us…."
-- Phil Butler, "Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships", pp. 6-7
“Rev. Frank Page estimates that only half of Southern Baptist churches will still exist two decades from now.”
-- Olivia St. John in “Warning to Baptists: Turn or burn”, (www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=66430, June 07, 2008)
“A church should be a camp of soldiers, not an hospital of invalids. But there is exceedingly much difference between what ought be and what is, and consequently many of God's people are in so sad a state that the very fittest prayer for them is for revival.”
-- C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), British Baptist pastor in "What Is a Revival?", from the December 1866 "Sword and Trowel")
College/Education:
“Christians cannot afford to be indifferent to the outcome of this struggle for the single most important institution shaping Western culture. It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our teachers, our business executives, our lawyers, our artists, will be trained. It is at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives. And since these are the opinion makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture. If the Christian worldview can be restored to a place of prominence and respect at the university, it will have a leavening effect throughout society. If we change the university, we change our culture through those who shape our culture.”
-- J.P. Moreland Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
“The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world . . . More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world.”
-- Charles Malik (1906-1987), President of the UN General Assembly, in "A Christian Critique of the University"
*“Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the Cross of Christ.”
-- Jonathan Dickinson (1688-1747), 1st president, Princeton University
“If I had to say anything about the general intellectual climate of American universities with respect to faith, addressed to young believers entering such an institution, I would warn them. I would say, 'Watch out, because they are going to kill you with kindness.' You'll be allowed to practice and express your faith openly, but you will not be taken seriously.”
-- Dr. Ken Miller, Brown University professor
*“I am much afraid that the universities and schools will prove to be the gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount.”
-- Martin Luther (1483-1536), Reformation leader
“College isn't the place to go for ideas.”
-- Helen Keller (1880-1968)
“Learning is not compulsory...neither is survival.”
-- W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), statistician and mathematical physicist
“I use that trust [that college students have in their professors] to effectively brainwash them...our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal-without any demonstration-to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.”
-- Dr. Mark Singham, evolutionist professor, in “Teaching and Propaganda,” Physics Today (vol. 53, June 2000), p. 54.
“...[T]he university is indeed the place where we receive advance training in how to serve the gods of our age?education does in fact transform and mold our vision of life so that we serve as guides in a culture led by idols?”
-- Brian Walsh & Robert Middleton, in The Transforming Vision (1984)
“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God.”
-- Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), Founding Father
“The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
-- John Milton, British poet, in “Of Education”
“...[K]ey persons within journalism (especially publishers and editors, and also journalism professionalizers from the ranks of the universities and the active press) actively sought to minimize and ultimately to undermine traditional religion”.
-- Richard Flory, Biola University Sociology professor, in The Secular Revolution
“Atheism is on the run. Darwinism is on the ropes; Freudianism is passé; and the only serious Marxists left in the world seem to have gravitated to the English and history departments of American universities. Indeed many colleges have become a kind of old folks home for recalcitrant Reds, where they can rant and rave all they want, but where no one really takes them seriously any more.”
-- T. M. Moore, theologian
“Professors and students claim to be on a quest for truth while denying that it exists or that anyone could identify it if it did. Such is the nihilistic atmosphere in major universities around the world.”
-- Dave Hunt, discernment ministry leader
“In college, [Christian students] are assaulted by secular relativism, and if we don't prepare them, they will be like lambs led to slaughter.”
-- Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship
“College [has] more and more replaced the church as the source of new values, of new ethical outlooks.”
-- Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American novelist
“Colleges and universities are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation.”
-- James Nelson Black, in "Freefall of the American University"
“Colleges [have] forfeited the responsibilities of in loco parentis and have gone into the pimping and brothel business.”
-- Vigen Guroian, Loyola College professor
“Our Bible curriculum here is so bad that it is inoculating the students against the gospel and the Christian life.”
-- South Florida Christian high school Bible teacher (2005)
“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence and physician
“College campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banded words and prohibited scientific inquiry.”
-- Ann Coulter, syndicated legal columnist
“Young men and women are being enticed to think of themselves as two selves, one that is mind and reason in the classroom and another self, 'after hours,' that is all body and passion. They begin to imagine-though few entirely believe it-that they can use (that is, abuse) their bodies as they please for pleasure, and that choosing to do so has nothing to do with their academic studies or future lives. In reality they are following a formula for self-disintegration and failure.”
-- Vigen Guorian, Loyola University professor
*“Let every student well consider...that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.”
-- Harvard College Laws (1642)
“Education (the institution) has now adopted values, attitudes, and practices that make any rigorous understanding of the human self and life impossible.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, "Renovation of the Heart", p. 47
“We need to be preparing our children for going out into the world, where everything they believe may in fact be challenged.”
-- Tony Arnold, Director of Media Relations for Campus Crusade for Christ
“The average college graduate's proficient literacy in English [the ability to read lengthy, complex texts and draw complicated inferences] has declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent ten years later.”
-- Chuck Colson, BreakPoint, “Musical Mush: Are We Impairing Our Capacity to Think?” 2/6/06
“A lack of basic Bible literacy hampers students' ability to understand both classic and contemporary work?. The Bible is not only a sacred Scripture to millions of Americans, it is also arguably - as one professor put it - the most influential text in all of Western culture.”
-- Dr. Marie Wachlin, author of "Bible Literacy Report II: What University Professors Say Incoming Students Need to Know"
“In many cases students are never exposed to competing ideas within their families, churches, or Christian schools, and as a result they go out into the world unprepared for the intellectual battles they are about to encounter, especially on secular college campuses.”
-- Nancy Pearcey, "Total Truth" (2005)
“One of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape.”
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935), American humorist, actor and comedian
“I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.”
-- Steve Irwin (1962-2006), Australian “Crocodile Hunter”
“[T]he survey found fewer than 1 percent of the [academic] scientists took the Bible literally, while 25 percent thought it was 'the inspired word of God' but not to be taken literally in its entirety. About 75 percent agreed the Bible 'is an ancient book of fables recorded by men.”
-- Elaine Howard Ecklund, Rice University sociologist professor and director of “Religion Among Academic Scientists” study, The Washington Times, 8/15/05, p.A3 (cited in American Christian College Journal, 10/05
“By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative... with 50 percent of faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans... 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative. 'What's most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field,' said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and co-author of the study [based on the 1999 North American Academic Study Survey].”
-- Howard Kurtz, American journalist in "The Washington Post", 3/29/05, p. C1
“College is a time for excess, for experimentation. It is four fleeting years of free-spirited indulgence . . . Don't waste it. Use that finite period to live on your won terms, let go.”
--New York Times editorial, October 6, 2006, A27
“To educate a child in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
-- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“If I had to do it all over again, I would speak less and study more.”
-- Billy Graham (1918-), Baptist evangelist
“Colleges are breeding grounds for eating disorders and unhealthy obsession with food.”
-- Courtney Martin, in "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters"
“Blame it on an analytical background, perhaps, but the survey found fewer than 1 percent of the scientists took the Bible literally, while 25 percent thought it was ‘the inspired word of God’ but not to be taken literally in its entirety. About 75 percent agreed the Bible ‘is an ancient book of fables recorded by man.’”
-- Elaine Howard Ecklund, Rice University sociologist in “Religion Among Academic Scientists”, presented to the Association for Sociology of Religion, 2005 (The American Christian College Journal, 10/05)
“Schools [are]…institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood.”
-- John Taylor Gatto, NY State Teacher of the Year (1991) and author, in “The Public School Nightmare: Why Fix a System Designed to Destroy Individual Thought?” http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_gatto.html#top
[Speaking about politics, but it could apply to several things:] “You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool.”
-- George Orwell (pen name for Eric Arthur Blair), (1903-1950), British author and journalist
“Today’s child is bewildered when he entrs the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects and schedules.”
-- Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Canadian scholar/philosopher/educator in 1967
“The college environment is very conducive to hooking up. On campus there is a relatively homogenous population of young men and women living in close proximity to each other with no strictly enforced rules monitoring their behavior. Students generally socialize amongst themselves, which fosters a sense of safety or comfort and they share the mantra that college is a time to “let loose” and party. All of these things factor into why the hookup culture flourishes on campus. “The hookup culture definitely affects the genders differently in at least two important ways. First, women are far more likely than men to get a bad reputation for how they conduct themselves in the hookup culture. Women can get a bad reputation for many different things, including how often they hook up, who they hook up with, how far they go sexually during a hookup, and how they dress when they go out on a night where hooking up may happen. Men who are very active in the hookup culture may be called a “player”; women, on the other hand, get labeled a “slut.” Second, women are not getting what they want from the hookup system. Women often want relationships and most are dissatisfied with how often hooking up leads to “nothing,” i.e., no ongoing, stable relationship. There are certainly many cases where a woman does not want a hookup to evolve into a relationship, but on average women are far more interested in a hookup turning into “something more” than men are. This puts women in a difficult situation. If they do not hook up at all, they are left out of the dominant culture on campus and will likely have difficulty finding opportunities to form sexual and romantic relationships with the opposite sex. However, if they do hook up, they have to walk a fine line to make sure they do so in a way that makes them a part of the mainstream on campus without crossing the line and getting negatively labeled. “Although hookup encounters generally occur at night after students attend parties or go to local bars, several students I interviewed mentioned feeling like they had to be “on” 24/7. This fishbowl existence is all part of what I call the “sexual arena” on campus where students are constantly watching one another, gossiping about one another and judging one another for how they look as well as how they conduct themselves in the hookup culture. “I think traditional dating is surviving alongside of hooking up in the larger culture, but on campus hooking up has replaced dating as the primary means for students to meet and form sexual and romantic relationships. This does not mean that students never go out for dinner and a movie. The “date” still exists among college students, but it is couples who are already in an exclusive relationship who do it. In other words, the pathway to a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship where a couple might go on a date begins with hooking up. In the dating era, students would go on a date, which might lead to something sexual happening; in the hookup era, students hook up, which might lead to dating. This is a reversal of the traditional order of things. The problem is that many college men are pleased with the status quo; they can hook up and if they want to pursue an ongoing relationship they can, but they are under no obligation to do so. Women, on the other hand, get increasingly frustrated after freshman year with how often it seems that hooking up leads to “nothing.” “Several of the students I interviewed mentioned the “walk of shame,” which refers to a college student, usually female, walking home the next morning after a hookup encounter in the same outfit he/she was wearing the evening prior. Given that students dress differently for “going out” at night than during the daytime, it is obvious to onlookers when a student is doing the walk of shame. One of many interesting things about this phrase is that students use the word “shame” at all. If students accept hooking up and believe that “everybody’s doing it,” then why do they use the term shame when referencing a hookup encounter? I think that phrase actually underscores an important issue: Many students are struggling with the hookup system.”
-- Kathleen A. Bogle, LaSalle University sociologist and author of “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus” (2008), in an interview with Andy Guess (www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/29/hookups)
“For most people, college is a waste of time.”
-- Wall Street Journal article title by Charles Murray, 8/13/08, page A17 http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121858688764535107.html
“First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a ‘BA.’ … The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.”
-- Charles Murray in “For Most People, College is a Waste of Time,” Wall Street Journal, 8/13/08, page A17 http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121858688764535107.html
“The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students…. We are going to go right on trying to discredit you [parents] in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable…. I think those students are lucky to find themselves under…people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents…. I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers. The only difference is that I serve a better cause.”
-- Dr. Richard Rorty (1931-2007), American postmodern (postanalytic) philosopher and former professor at University of Virginia, Wellesley, Princeton and Stanford, quoted in “Rorty’s Rebels” by Ed Veith in World Magazine (September 6/13, 2008, p. 31)
“We have now educated ourselves into a state of complete imbecility.”
-- Malcolm Muggeridge British Journalist (1903-1990)
“Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world (such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know.”
-- Peter Kreeft, Boston College philosophy professor
“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”
-– Sir Claus Moser (b. 1922), British-Jewish statistician and civil servant
“In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the tip of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have.”
–- Lee Iacocca, in "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" p. 217
“The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.”
-- President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850)
Creation/Evolution:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
-- R. C. Lewontin, evolutionist in “Billions and Billions of Demons”, "The New York Review of Books". 44(1):31.
“Belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if that religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.”
-- Will Provine, Cornell University atheistic professor
“Creation myths lie at the heart of all human cultures, and science is no exception; until we know where we came from, we do not know who we are. The origin of life is also a stubborn problem, with no solution in sight... Biology textbooks often include a chapter on how life may have arisen from non-life, and while responsible authors do not fail to underscore the difficulties and uncertainties, readers still come away with the impression that the answer is almost within their grasp.“
-- Franklin Harold, 2001. The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Origin of Life, Oxford University Press, p. 235-236.
“Life arose here on earth from inanimate matter, by some kind of evolutionary process, about four billion years ago. This is not a statement of demonstrable fact, but an assumption almost universally shared by specialists as well as scientists in general. It is not supported by any direct evidence, nor is it likely to be ... The reasons for the general consensus are, first, the lack of a more palatable alternative; and second, that absent the presumption of a terrestrial and natural genesis there would be no basis for scientific inquiry into the origin of life.” (p. 236, 237)
“It bears repeating that we know very little for certain, and that it is seldom possible to formulate hypotheses that can be falsified by experiment; the opinions of scholars are, therefore, colored by personal beliefs about what should have happened, and even about what is meant by 'life.'” (p. 239)
“A historical theory must account for historical events, and in truth there is not (and perhaps cannot be) convincing evidence that there ever was a rich broth of organic substances, or that it played the role assigned to it by the theory.” (p. 244)
-- Franklin Harold, "The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Origin of Life (2001: Oxford University Press)
*“Materialists and madmen never have doubts.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
George Caylor interview with unnamed molecular biologist “J”:
J: ...To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times. One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself. Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.
Caylor: I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.
J: The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”
-- “The Biologist,” Feb. 17, 2000, in The [Lynchburg, VA] Ledger).
*“Of course, the other thing about evolution is that anything can be said because very little can be disproved. Experimental evidence is minimal.”
-- Bryan Appleyard, evolutionist
*“Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion-full fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian... Evolution is religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”
-- Michael Ruse, FSU professor and evolutionist, (Canadian) National Post, (5/13/00)
“I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But that is what has happened in Biology…. I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.”
-- Søren Løvtrup, Swedish evolutionary scientist in "Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth", p. 422
*“Things don't look hopeful for Darwinian naturalists.”
-- Alvin Plantinga, Christian Philosopher
“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity... there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996), atheistic scientist
“The cosmos is all there ever is or ever was or ever will be...”
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996), atheistic scientist
*“If we had to accept the idea of an independent creator, the explanations given in [several Buddhist texts] which completely refutes the existence per se of all phenomena, would be negated.”
-- Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhist leader
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
-- Richard Dawkins, Oxford University atheist science professor
Evolution “has primarily been an attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the mantle of science in an effort to refute all religious claims concerning a creator - an effort that has also often attempted to suppress all scientific criticisms of Darwin's work.”
-- Rodney Stark, sociologist in "For the Glory of God"
“The crazy part about science and yet the exciting part about science is you almost never have something that's black and white.”
-- Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief, Journal of the American Medical Association (2005)
“Evolutionists have 'Physics Envy'. They tell the public that the science behind evolution is the same science that sent people to the moon and cures diseases. It's not. The science behind evolution is not empirical, but forensic. Because evolution took place in history, its scientific investigations are after the fact-no testing, no observations, no repeatability, no falsification, nothing at all like physics....I think this is what the public discerns-that evolution is just a bunch of just-so stories disguised as legitimate science.”
-- John Chaikowsky, “Geology v. Physics,” Geotimes (vol. 50, April 2005, page 6).
“Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam's fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None.
“Even a high school student knows enough about evolution to know that nowhere in the evolutionary description of our origins does there appear an Adam or an Eve or an Eden or a forbidden fruit. Evolution means a development from one form to the next to meet the ever-changing challenges from an ever-changing nature. There is no fall from a previous state of sublime perfection.
“Without Adam, without the original sin, Jesus Christ is reduced to a man with a mission on a wrong planet!”
-- “The Meaning of Evolution?” American Atheist, September 1979, p. 30.
“There's a sense we as humans have kind of peaked. A different way to look at it is it's almost impossible for evolution not happen.”
-- Greg Wray, Director for Center for Evolutionary Genomics, Duke University (2005)
“Scientists are still far from understanding the ancient, intricate processes that lead to the origin of life.”
-- Robert M. Hazen, of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, in “Genesis: Rocks, Minerals, and the Geochemical Origin of Life,” Elements (vol. 1, June 2005), p. 135.
“At the present there is no completely satisfactory theory for the origin of life.”
-- George Cody, of the Carnegie Institution, in “Geochemical Connections to Primitive Metabolism,” Elements (vol 1, June 2005), p. 139.
“In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith-rival stories of origins, rival judgments about he meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies-pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind.”
-- Michael Ruse, FSU professor and evolutionist in The Evolution-Creation Struggle, p. 3
“No one has ever produced a species by mechanism of natural selection. No one has ever gotten near it....”
-- Colin Patterson, evolutionist, “Cladistics” Interview on BBC, 3/4/82
“It appears that the universe knew we were coming.”
-- Freeman Dyson (1923-) mathematical physicist
“I'm very concerned about the religious indoctrination of children. I want to show how faith acts like a virus that attacks the young and infects generation after generation . . . It's time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. And I want to show how the scriptural roots of the Judeo-Christian moral edifice are cruel and brutish . . . What in the 21st century are we doing venerating a book [the Bible] that contains such stuff? . . . . The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction - jealous and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist, an ethnic cleanser urging His people on to acts of genocide . . . When it comes to children, I think of religion as a dangerous virus. It's a virus which is transmitted partly through teachers and clergy, but also down the generations from parent to child to grandchild. Children are especially vulnerable to infection by the virus of religion.”
-- Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor and evolutionist in “The Virus of Faith”, part of UK channel 4 series “Root of All Evil” May, 2006, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252
“I suppose...”
-- Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859), stated over 800 times
“This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control.”
-- Physicist Robert Jastrow, astronomer, physicist and cosmologist
“Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another. Since there is no evidence, for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution...throughout the whole array of higher multi-cellular organisms.”
-- Unnamed British biologist in 2001 (quoted in HUMAN EVENTS, Vol. 62 No. 29; 8/28/06, p. 20.)
“I am open to [the notion of theistic revelation], but not enthusiastic about potential revelation from God. On the positive side, for example, I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroeder's comments on Genesis 1. That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation.”
-- Antony Flew, former atheistic British philosopher (Philosophia Christi, Winter, 2005), www.biola.edu/philchrisit
“The harmony of natural law . . . reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) www.worldviewweekend.com/secure/cwnetwork/article.php?ArticleID=1293
“We know...almost nothing about [the] origin [of living things] when the world was young. Our knowledge is vast, but our understanding is partial and full of gaps; for all its familiarity and ubiquity, life remains fundamentally mysterious.... We must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”
-- Emeritus biochemistry professor Franklin Harold at Colorado State University
“Far from being magisterial in its objectivity, science was conditioned by history, society, and the prejudices of scientists.”
-- Thomas Kuhn, Harvard physics instructor and historian in "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962)
“Cosmologies are made up of small snippets of physical reality that have been remodeled by society into vast cosmic deceptions.”
--Jeremy Rifkin, evolutionist
“You have to understand, in the current academic climate, Intelligent Design is like leprosy or heresy in times past. To be tagged as an ID supporter is to become an academic pariah, and this holds even at so-called Christian institutions that place a premium on respectability at the expense of truth and the offense of the Gospel.”
-- William Dembski, research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in “I.D. rift hits Baylor again” by Erin Roach www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=26372)
“I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of the computer materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or ‘source code’ used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence. “The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects [Claude E.] Shannon’s concept of entropy [released in 1948] and his measure of ‘news.’ Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes. “As I pondered this materialist superstition, it became increasingly clear to me that in all the sciences I studied, information comes first, and regulates the flesh and the world, not the other way around. The pattern seemed to echo some familiar wisdom. Could it be, I asked myself on day in astonishment, that the opening of St. John’s Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, is a central dogma of modern science? “In raising this question I was not affirming a religious stance. At the time it first occurred to me, I was still a mostly secular intellectual. But after some 35 years of writing and study in science and technology, I can now affirm the principle empirically. Salient in virtually every technical field—from quantum theory and molecular biology to computer science and economics—is an increasing concern with the word. It passes by many names: logos, logic, bits, bytes, mathematics, software, knowledge, syntax, semantics, code, plan, program, design, algorithm, as well as the ubiquitous ‘information.’ In every case, the information is independent of its physical embodiment or carrier.”
-- George Gilder, "The National Review" (July 17, 2006, pp. 30-31), reprinted in The American Christian College Journal (9/06, pp.4-5)
We “do not yet really understand how any single gene from a higher life form really works—not in its entirety…a single gene has about 50,000 component parts.”
-- John Stanford, Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome, p. 135, reprinted in The American Christian College Journal (11/07, p. 6)
“The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA.”
-- Michael Polanyi chemist and philosopher in "Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy" (1958)
“Once when I was speaking to some secularists at Harvard, I asked, ‘What preceded the Hot Big Bang?’ There was a pause, and then one man said, ‘Eternal matter.’ I liked the answer though I disagreed with it – at least he was admitting there is something greater than the universe. So then I asked, ‘What is the difference, in intellectual terms alone, between believing in eternal matter on the one hand, and an eternal Creator on the other hand?’ He paused, then said, ‘Theological baggage.’ In other words, as he continued to explain, he feared that if he admitted the possibility of ‘God’ into the equation, then that would allow ‘religionists’ to force religion on him, and it also would hurt good science. His answer was not intellectual, but emotional and relational. “We who affirm a biblical faith need to listen to him. This is the testimony of someone who has been burned by religion and/or relationships, but the Bible on it own terms never imposes itself, and it is the finest basis there is for science and the scientific method (as I write about elsewhere). Do we treat such skeptics the same away we expect to be treated? Theological baggage must be removed before there is true freedom to engage in scientific, philosophical and theological discussion in this or any context.”
-- John Rankin, “Darwin and the Days of Creation,” www.teinetwork.com/creation.html
“‘Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true?’ I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time. Eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing: it ought not to be taught in high school.’”
-- Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History, in "Darwin on Trial", by Phillip E. Johnson (The American Christian College Journal, 1/08, p. 3)
“I conceived the idea [of uniformitarianism] five or six years ago, that if ever the Mosaic geology could be set down [refuted] without giving offense, it would be in an historical sketch…” [i.e., rewriting history].
-- John Lyell (1797-1875), Father of Modern Geology and a Deist, in a letter written to George Poulette Scrope (1830)
“Observe the forms and beauties of sensible things and comprehend the Word of God in them. If you do so, the truth will reveal to you in all such things only He who made them.”
-- Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–877), Irish philosopher, theologian and poet
“Today we are learning the language in which God created life.”
-- President Bill Clinton at a White House press conference on June 26, 2000 announcing the mapping of the human genome
“I cannot believe that God would play dice with the universe.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), world-renowned German Jewish theoretical physicist
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as [anatomy] Professor [Hermann] Schaaffhausen [1816-1893] has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
-- Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex", 2nd ed. (1871; reprint, London: John Murray, 1922), pp. 241-42
“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites.”
-- T. H. Huxley (1825-1895), British biologist and 'Darwin’s Bulldog', in "Lectures and Lay Sermons" (1871; reprint, London: Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent, 1926), p. 115
“Scientists are still far from understanding the ancient, intricate processes that lead to the origin of life.”
-- Robert M. Hazen, of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute in “Genesis: Rocks, Minerals, and the Geochemical Origin of Life,” Elements, vol. 1, June 2005, p. 135)
“At the present there is no completely satisfactory theory for the origin of life.”
-- George Cody, of the Carnegie Institution in “Geochemical Connections to Primitive Metabolism,” Elements, vol 1, June 2005, p. 139
“Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens -- all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.”
-- Jacques Barzun, historian quoted in “Making a Monkey Out of Darwin” by Patrick J. Buchanan, 06/30/2009, www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32510
“Our uniform experience affirms that specified information—whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, encoded in a radio signal, or produced in a simulation experiment—always arises from an intelligent source, from a mind and not a strictly material process. … Indeed it follows that the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of the specified, digitally encoded information in DNA is that it too had an intelligent source.”
-- Dr. Stephen Meyer, in "Signature in the Cell"
Culture:
“The greatest threat to our civilization comes from within that civilization itself: our $64 euphemism for it is secularism. A much blunter word is godlessness. Our civilization, for all its churches and all its churchgoers, is predominantly a secular, godless civilization.”
-- Life Magazine editorial excerpt, April 18, 1949
“A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor Renovation of the Heart, p. 35
“I think it's just the loss of family values. It's the narcissism of our age, of people thinking only of themselves - not even of their family. When you lose those values of morality, you suddenly have no footing. And I think that's when these people think there's no problem with doing evil.”
-- David Conn, Los Angeles prosecutor
“[K]ey persons within journalism (especially publishers and editors, and also journalism professionalizers from the ranks of the universities and the active press) actively sought to minimize and ultimately to undermine traditional religion”.
-- Richard Flory, in "The Secular Revolution"
“The secularization of the institutions of American public life did not happen by accident or happenstance?.[It was] an achievement of specific groups of people, many of whom intended to marginalize religion. The people at the core of these secularizing movements, at least, knew what they were doing, and they wanted to do it”.
-- Christian Smith, edtior, "The Secular Revolution"
“...College [has] more and more replaced the church as the source of new values, of new ethical outlooks.”
-- Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American fiction writer
*“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history and culture also becomes a dead people.”
-- Malcolm X (1925-1965), civil rights leader
“[Star Wars is] designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, 'Here's the answer.' It's to say, 'Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?'”
-- George Lucas, “Of Myth and Men,” Time (4/26/99), p. 93.
“The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell . . .”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”
-- Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), French philosopher, sociologist and theologian
“The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.” “The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.”
-- President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), on July 4, 1849
“Private opinion creates public opinion…That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.”
-- Jan Struther (Joyce Anstruther/Placzek, 1901-53), British poet
“Culture is religion incarnate.”
-- Chuck Colson, "BreakPoint", 11/19/07
“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French political/cultural researcher
“I fear we are too much concerned with material things to remember that our real strength lies in spiritual values.”
-- President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), in 1946
“A culture that does not aspire to the divine becomes obsessed with the fascination of evil, reveling in the frivolous, the depraved, and the bestial.”
-- George Gilder, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute, scholar and author
“A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists. His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone—from their next-door neighbor to the mayor. “‘In the presence of diversity, we hunker down,’ said Putnam. ‘We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us.’ “Professor Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’”
-- "The Financial Times", October 2006, quoted in “California, Here We Come!” by Patrick J. Buchanan, 06/26/2009 www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32465
“It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based on the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), in 192
“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in "Brave New World Revisited", the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In "1984", Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain." In "Brave New World", they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”
-- Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business", 1985)
“Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.”
-- Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in a talk given at the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart.
“Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information -- misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information -- information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”
-- Neil Postman (1931-2003), American author, media theorist and cultural critic in "Amusing Ourselves To Death" (1985)
Evangelism/Outreach:
*“The problem is not only to win souls but to save minds. If you win the whole world and lost the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world.”
-- Charles Malik (1906-1987), President of the UN General Assembly
*“Build bridges of friendship that will bear the weight of the truth.”
-- Kim Gustafson, Common Grounds Consultants
“I preach the gospel all the time...sometimes I use words.”
-- St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)
“We must not expect the power of Christ if we reject the program of Christ.”
-- Charles Erdman
“The defense of the Gospel is most effective when combined with the demeanor of Christ.”
-- Art Lindsley
“You're invading our territory. Get back in your church, where you belong.”
-- Jehovah Witnesses in Arlington, TX when they found Christians doing ministry in the streets
*“Will we bow before the god of culture? Or will we...give an account to all those who ask us not just what we believe but why?”
-- Voddie Baucham, Baylor University professor
“All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.”
-- Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961)
“Let's pretend that you are someone who might be willing, in theory, at some point, possibly, to consider maybe doing something that, while not 'evangelism'-type evangelism, still could be in some way construed as a sort of sharing of hope. Kind of.”
-- Steven C. Bonsey, A Shy Person's Guide to the Practice of Evangelism
“Evangelism is not selling Jesus, but showing Jesus; evangelism is not mere telling about Christ, but about being Christ.”
-- Lee C. Camp, in "Mere Discipleship"
*“Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.”
-- St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Spanish Catholic mystic
“Whom you would change, you must first love.”
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights leader
“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
-- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist and poet
“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
-- Unknown
“Be sure you do not treat those who do not share our true convictions in such a way that we make them glad we’re going to end up in separate destinations!”
“Be sure you do not treat those who do not share our true convictions in such a way that we make them glad we’re going to end up in separate destinations!”
-- Dr. Andre Ong, Senior Pastor, International Christian Church, San Deigo, CA
“You know how many seeds are in an apple. But you don’t know how many apples are in a seed.”
-- Rev. Robert Schuller (b. 1926), former Crystal Cathedral senior pastor
“Evangelism is: every day, in every way, helping my unsaved friend take one step closer to Jesus.”
-- Dr. Dave Geisler, founder of Meekness and Truth Ministries
“I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize, I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward; and atheists who think people shouldn’t proselytize, ‘Just leave me alone, and keep your religion to yourself,’ ah, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you, and this [topic of proselytizing] is more important than that.”
-- Penn Jillette, half of the “Penn and Teller” show, magician/artist/comedian, and self-professed atheist, http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=245243
Freedom/Liberty/Bondage/Slavery:
“Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
-- Mark Twain (1857-1938), American writer
“Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.”
-- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist
*“An appeal to arms and the God of hosts is all that is left us. But we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”
-- Patrick Henry (1736-1799), American patriot
“There is no slavery but ignorance.”
-- Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), American orator and agnostic
“The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor Renovation of the Heart, p. 95
*“In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.”
-- Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965), Business-statesman
“You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me - and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!”
-- Victor Frankl (1905-1997), Man's Search for Meaning
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without religion.”
-- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French historian and political thinker
“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence and physician
“Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”
-- President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“Only those who one day fight for freedom are worthy of it.”
-- Lyrics of a song in Cuba
*“Only the disciplined are free.”
-- J. C. Penney (1875-1971), business and entrepreneur
“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), British intellectual and deist, in “The Crisis”
The atheist worldview of life is “a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
*“It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.”
-- Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961), journalist-author
“I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.”
-- President John Adams (1735-1826)
“...The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women...”
-- Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961)
“The hour is fast approaching, on which the honor and success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding country depend. Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty -- that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.”
-- Gen. George Washington, spoken to troops on Aug. 23, 1776
“Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
*“Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.”
-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), British intellectual and deist, in Letter to the People of France
“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished by default it can never be recovered.”
-- Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961), syndicated newspaper columnist
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?”
-- President Thomas Jefferson, 1781
“If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave.”
-- Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say, p. 180
“Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.”
-- Cato (234-149 BC), Roman statesman-historian
“It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
-- Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Founding Father
“All of us denounce war—all of us consider it man’s greatest stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.”
-- Paul Valery (1871-1945), French poet, essayist and philosopher
“Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos.”
-- Cullen Hightower (b. 1923), American salesman and trainer
“Our freedom to discipline ourselves is a freedom we can lose if we don't use it.”
-- Cullen Hightower (b. 1923), American salesman and trainer
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
-- Anthony Kennedy, US Supreme Court Justice, Planned Parenthood of "Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey" decision, 1992
“No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners [morals], they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign Invaders.”
Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Founding Father
“It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.”
-- Patrick Henry, Founding Father
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use.
-- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher, theologian and author
“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”
-- President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.”
-- M. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), British playwright and novelist
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”
-- Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Founding Father, political philosopher
Goals/Priorities:
*“I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the Kingdom of God. If anything I have will advance that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only as by giving or keeping it I may advance the kingdom of Him I love.”
-- David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish medical missionary to Africa
*“More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.”
-- Billy Sunday (1862-1935), evangelist and former major league baseball star
“Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, (1906-2001) wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh
“When I was younger, I felt life was about acquiring things. But as I get older, I know life is totally about losing everything.”
-- Mike Tyson, former world boxing champion (6/13/05 South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10C)
“Your heart, my friend, is the size of a stadium. If you try to fill it with small things - a new car, a vacation, a promotion at work, a bigger home, a stock portfolio - a mournful echo will fill your life. But if you fill your stadium with all of humanity and search for ways to make their lives better each day, you will find yourself in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing in the right way.”
-- Roy H. Williams, “The Wizard,” advertising guru
*“Let every student well consider...that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.”
-- Harvard College Laws (1642)
“He who lives for himself runs a very small business.”
-- Otto Derkson, WorldTeam missionary
“A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“For most of my life I have believed that success is found in the running of the race. How you run the race - your planning, preparation, practice, and performance - counts for everything. Winning or losing is a by-product, an aftereffect, of that effort. For me, it's the quality of your effort that counts most and offers the greatest and most long-lasting satisfaction.”
-- John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach in Wooden on Leadership, (p. 8).
*“They can cut my body in a thousand pieces, and every single one will cry out 'Jesus'.”
-- Unnamed evangelist working among Muslims in a south Asian country
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
-- John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
-- Ben Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father
“Ironically, those who seek their ultimate value in the next world are the only ones able to do much good in this one.”
-- Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction (1983), p. 333
“Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has a deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge, July 25, 1924
“If you are not doing what you should be doing by the time you graduate from high school, the odds are strongly stacked against you that you won't start doing them in college. Since this is indisputable, that means right now you, as a high school student, are as close to Christ in fellowship and obedience as you will ever be. Question: how close is that?”
-- Bill Perry, international student missionary and pastor
“We have three kinds of guys on our team. We have guys that get it; they play good; they understand how to play winning football. We have some guys that are trying to get it, and they are working hard every day? We are supporting them, and we want the guys that have it to support them. Then we have some guys that don't get it and don't know that they don't get it. We are trying to replace them. We only have a couple left.”
-- Nick Saban, former Miami Dolphins head coach, on 9/11/06 (Sun-Sentinel, 9/12/06, D-1)
“Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), in Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1739
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
-- Helen Keller (1880-1968)
“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist, poet and Transcendentalist leader
“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.”
-- Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet and architect
“Everyone thinks of changing the world. No one thinks of changing himself.”
-- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, pacifist/anarchist, educational reformer and philosopher
“Planning your path is easier when you have an eye on the horizon. Don’t be an ostrich.”
-- Roy Williams, advertising guru (Monday Morning Memo, 1/28/08)
“I’d like to end up sort of unforgettable.”
-- Ringo Starr, former Beattle and rock icon (by J. Rentilly “Verbatim” column, US Airways magazine, January, 08, p. 90)
“I am the King's good servant, but God's first.”
-- Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), British lawyer, author, statesman, scholar and Roman Catholic saint, dissenting to the divorce of the Henry VIII
“If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
-- Texas saying
“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.”
-- President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
“Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music still in them.”
–- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), American writer, poet and doctor
“I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”
-- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author
“Sociologist Anthony Campolo once did a study in which 50 people older than 95 were asked, "If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?" An array of responses came from these eldest of senior citizens. However, three answers surfaced far more often than others. 1) If I had it to do over again, I would reflect more. 2) If I had it to do over again, I would risk more. 3) If I had it to do over again, I would do more things that would live on after I am dead.”
-- Michael, McMahon, in “Farrah and You” by Chuck Norris 06/30/2009, www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32513
Government/Public Office/Laws:
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.”
-- President Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
“Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life.”
-- President Gerald Ford (1913-2006)
“Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.” (“Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.”)
-- Tacitus (56-120 AD), Roman historian
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English philosopher
“He who introduces into public office the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
-- Ronald Reagan, then California governor (1911-2004)
“Our word 'idiot' comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.”
-- Edith Hamilton (1867-1963), educator & scholar
“Once you abolish God, the government becomes the God.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
“I always try to remind people that the purpose of religious leaders is for our afterlife. The purpose of elected officials is for this life on Earth.”
-- Bob Mulholland, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee (2004)
“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British historian
“I do not want to end up with an American style of politics, with us going out there beating our chest about our faith. Politics and religion - it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if [religion] ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy.”
-- Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in 2005
“In a free society, the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.”
-- Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American journalist
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
-- President George Washington (1732-1799)
“Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion or politics... The things that will destroy us are: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality.”
-- Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948), Indian spiritual and national leader
“The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me.”
-- Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) to pastor Martin Neimoller (1892-1984)
“Most of the work of government does not need to be done. And, if you can remember that, if we could all remember that, this country would be better off.”
-- Lyn Nofziger (1924-2006), Reagan White House adviser
“The whole art of government consists in being honest.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is the Bible; on the political side, the Constitution.”
-- President Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964
“Given the right policies, intellectual and economic productivity trumps biological reproductivity. 'Between 1820 and 1992,' Ronald Bailey writes in Earth Report 2000, 'world population quintupled even as the world's economies grew 40-fold.' Productivity matters more than other statistical measures because it demonstrates we're doing more with less. That's why, for example, starvation is a political disaster, not a natural one. There's literally too much food in the world.”
-- Jonah Goldberg, “Worrywarts still don't get it,” Sun-Sentinel 25A, 10/20/06
“I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
-- Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Founding Father and American patriot
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
-- President John Adams (1797-1801)
“No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.”
-- Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 1824
“We don't give federal grants to tobacco companies to teach students ‘low-risk’ forms of smoking on the grounds that ‘kids are going to smoke anyway.’ We shouldn't be giving federal grants to groups that sell contraception, to teach kids to use contraception.”
-- Jennifer Roback Morse, American author
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress ... But then I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer
“Contrary to the conventional wisdom and the predictions of computer models, the Earth's climate has not warmed appreciably in the past two decades, and probably not since about 1940. The evidence is overwhelming: a) Satellite data show no appreciable warming of the global atmosphere since 1979. In fact, if one ignores the unusual El Nino year of 1998, one sees a cooling trend. b) Radiosonde data from balloons released regularly around the world confirm the satellite data in every respect. This fact has been confirmed in a recent report of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences. c) The well-controlled and reliable thermometer record of surface temperatures for the continental United States shows no appreciable warming since about 1940. The same is true for Western Europe. These results are in sharp contrast to the GLOBAL instrumental surface record, which shows substantial warming, mainly in NW Siberia and subpolar Alaska and Canada. d) But tree-ring records for Siberia and Alaska and published ice-core records that I have examined show NO warming since 1940. In fact, many show a cooling trend. Conclusion: The post-1980 global warming trend from surface thermometers is not credible. The absence of such warming would do away with the widely touted ‘hockey stick’ graph (with its ‘unusual’ temperature rise in the past 100 years)…”
-- Dr. S. Fred Singer President, environmental physicist, founder of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Climate Change, July 18, 2000
“We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.”
– President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if the faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.”
-- Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American writer, journalist and commentator
“When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘guilty’.”
-- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.”
-- Bob Edwards (b., 1947), Public Radio International personality
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”
-- Groucho Marx (1890-1977), comedian
“The only ground of hope for the continuance of our free institutions is in the proper moral and religious training of the children, that they may be prepared to discharge aright the duties of men and citizens.”
-- President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), on July 4, 1849
“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”
-- Baron M. A. Rothschild (1744-1812), family founder of wealthy Jewish financiers
“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.”
-- Samuel Adams (1722-1803), US Founding Father
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), President and Founding Father
“English experience indicates that when two political parties agree about something, it is generally wrong.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British journalist, poet and philosopher
“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”
-- Attributed to Gideon Tucker, New York state surrogate judge in a case in 1866
“Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."
-- Elias Boudinot, (1740-1821), American lawyer, statesman and co-founder of the American Bible Society
“[W]hen all government...in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided...”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
-- “The 10 Cannots” by William J. H. Boetcker (1873–1962), German-born American religious leader and influential public speaker
“The government solution to any problem is usually at least as bad as the problem.”
-- Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers of America saw it, and thus with God’s help, it will continue to be.”
-- President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), in 1974
“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”
-- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and satirist
“Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.”
-- Frank McKinney (“Kin”) Hubbard (1868-1930), American cartoonist, humorist and journalist
“Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it.”
-- Cullen Hightower (b. 1923), American salesman and trainer
“Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?”
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935), American cowboy, actor and humorist
“The goal of the ‘liberals’ — as it emerges from the record of the past decades — was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot — by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli.”
-- Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born philosopher and novelist
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
-- Plato (428/427-347 BC), classical Greek philosopher and writer
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
-- Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American socialist, pacifist and frequent presidential candidate
“We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.”
-- Frank McKinney (“Kin”) Hubbard (1868-1930), American cartoonist, humorist and journalist
“If American democracy is to remain the greatest hope of humanity, it must continue abundantly in the faith of the Bible.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), in 1925
“Common delusions notwithstanding, the United States, I submit, is not a democracy — by which is meant a system in which the will of the people prevails. Rather it is a curious mechanism artfully designed to circumvent the will of the people while appearing to be democratic. Several mechanisms accomplish this. First, we have two identical parties which, when elected, do very much the same things. Thus the election determines not policy but only the division of spoils. Nothing really changes... Second, the two parties determine on which questions we are allowed to vote. They simply refuse to engage the questions that matter most to many people. If you are against affirmative action, for whom do you vote? If you regard the schools as abominations... it is fraud. In a sense, the candidates do not even exist. A presidential candidate consists of two speechwriters, a makeup man, a gestures coach, ad agency, two pollsters and an interpreter of focus groups. Depending on his numbers, the handlers may suggest a more fixed stare to crank up his decisiveness quotient for male or Republican voters, or dial in a bit of compassion for a Democratic or female audience. The newspapers will report this calculated transformation. Yet it works. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.”
-- Fred Reed (b. 1945), independent columnist (Patriot Post, Vol 8, #12; 3/17/08)
“The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.”
-- Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.”
-- Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French classical liberal theorist, political economist, politician and author in "The Law"
“To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.”
-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1880), British Prime Minister
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Lord, the money we do spend on government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935), American cowboy, actor and humorist
“A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.”
-- Authur Godfrey (1903-1983), American radio and TV broadcaster/entertainer
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”
-- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
“I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the [US] government.”
-- President James Madison (1751-1836), “Father of the Constitution,” The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #24, June 9, 2008)
“No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God.”
-- William Blackstone (1723-1780), British jurist and professor
“Politics is the art of the possible.”
-- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), Prussian and German statesman
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
-- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), Canadian-American liberal economist
“If you ever injected truth into politics you’d have no politics.”
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935), American humorist, social commentator and actor
“The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose…. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and socialist
“…Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.”
-- Thomas Sowell, political commentator
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people], we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), quoted in “Puff, the Magic Obama!” by Chuck Norris 09/03/2008 http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28364
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #38), 9/15/08
“When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished…. When financial meltdowns occur, the public’s outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
-- Ken Blackwell, The Patriot Post (Vol. 8, #39), 9/22/08
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”
-- Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born philosopher and novelist
“The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.”
-- Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French classical liberal theorist, political economist, politician and author
“The [political] left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’ The [political] right subscribes to the American formula, ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.”
-- Dennis Prager, There are Two Irreconcilable America’s, http://patriotpost.us/opinion/entry.asp?entry_id=48960
“The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power.”
-- Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel Laureate economist
“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
-- President James Madison (1751-1836), Founding Father and principle writer of the US Constitution
“There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Bad government results from too much government.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
-- Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), American broadcast journalist
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we ever spent before and it does not work…We have never made good on our promises…I say after eight years of this [FDR’s] Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!”
-- Henry Morgenthau (1891-1967), FDR’s faithful Treasury Secretary, comments made in May, 1939 of the failed New Deal programs
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”
-- President George Washington (1732-1799)
“[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”
-- Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Founding Father
“We believe in a false savior, the idol of government.”
-- Dr. Mark Hendrickson Grove City College economics professor, in “Obama pushes Keynesian policies while economy spirals”, Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 3/17/2009 www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=453382
“[By] a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but confiscate arbitrarily: and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.”
-- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British liberal economist, quoted in “How The Socialists Are Destroying America From Within”, by David A. Noebel www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4726/Brannon-Howse/David-Noebel
“The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”
-- Lord Salisbury (3rd Marquess of Salisbury, 1830-1903), three-time British Prime Minister
“Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our [American] freedoms were founded.… Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.” “A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity—as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal, and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population—as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state—as liberals do.” “The roots of liberalism—and its associated madness—can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains, and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.”
-- Dr. Lyle Rossiter, in "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness" (2009), quoted by John deVries in WorldNetDaily, 11/12/08
“Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.”
-- President James Madison (1751-1836)
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.”
-- President James Garfield (1831-1881), on July 4, 1876
“To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. …Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all blessings which flow from them must fall with them.”
-- Jedediah Morse (1761-1826), US clergyman and “Father of American geography” in 1799, in “Is Marriage a Religious or Civil Law Institution?” by Brannon Howse www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5061/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse
“If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health; and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy His favor. If the Holy Spirit is withdrawn from the Church, He is not present in the State; and if He, the only 'Lord, the Giver of Life,' be absent, that all order is impossible, and the elements of society lapse backward to primeval night and chaos ... I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide sea of politics, there is another King, one Jesus: the safety of the State can be secured only in the way of humble and whole-souled loyalty to His person and of obedience to His law.”
-- A. A. Hodge (1823-1886), American theologian, Presbyterian pastor and missionary
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people…. First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives… Pride blind[s] the foolish. Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America. The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
-- “American capitalism gone with a whimper”, by Stanislav Mishin, 27.04.2009, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father, in 1787
“Continual dependence upon welfare induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit…I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets…. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and courage and determination.”
-- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), in his 1935 State of the Union address
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that the democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”
-- Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), Scottish-born British lawyer and writer
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.”
-- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish writer, scholar and Christian apologist
“Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.”
-- George Will, American newspaper columnist
“No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.”
-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister, on June 4, 1945
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father
“A wise and frugal government which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned — this is the sum of good government.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Practical politics consists of ignoring the truth.”
-- Henry Adams (1850-1906), American farmer and politician
“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
-- Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher
“Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.”
-- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), American author
“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his so-called “separation of church and state” letter to Samuel Miller in 1808
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
-- President James Madison (1751-1836)
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
-- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French historian
“Under every stone lurks a politician.” -
- Aristophanes (~446-~386BC, ancient Greek comedic playwright
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care, and so on. The only thing lacking...is freedom.”
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), American general
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
-- Patrick Henry, first governor of Virginia
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? … I am inclined to believe that if faith be wanting in (a man) he must be subject; and if he believe, he must be free."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French politician and researcher in "Democracy in America"
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” -- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
History/Time/Eternity:
“To move with the times is, of course, to go where all times go.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1893-1963), British writer and thinker
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.“
-- Douglas McArthur (1880-1964), American general in WW 2
“The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn anything from history.”
-- Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), British scholar and historian
“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and thinker
“You know, we'll hardly get our feet out of time [and] into eternity that we'll bow our heads in shame and humiliation. We'll gaze on eternity and say, 'My God! Look at all the riches there were in Jesus Christ, and I've come to the Judgment Seat almost a pauper!”
-- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), American pastor, author
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
-- President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”
-- Will Durant (1885-1981), American historian, philosopher and writer
“History is not life. But since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.”
-- Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), US Supreme Court Justice
*“Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.”
-- Joan Wallach Scott (2004), Princeton women's history professor
“To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“History is philosophy teaching by examples.”
-- Lord Henry Bolingbroke (1678-1751), British philosopher and politician
“Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but in earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.”
-- Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), Renaissance English explorer and poet
“The man who views the world at 50 the same way as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
-- Mohammed Ali, boxing great
“The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.”
-- Dawson Trotman (1906-1956), founder of The Navigators
“God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity.”
-- Tony Snow (1955-2008), former White House presidential spokesperson
Ideas/Dreams:
“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”
-- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist
*“Ideas have consequences.”
-- Professor Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963), American scholar
“The one who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
-- Anonymous
“When [Satan] undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with an idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 100
“Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life.”
-- Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), Scottish pastor and Bible teacher
“There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
-- Everett Dirksen (1896-1969), US senator
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
-- Victor Hugo (1773-1885), French poet, novelist and writer
“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), British Parliamentarian
“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German theologian
“The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.”
-- Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961), syndicated newspaper columnist
“If you cannot be the master of your language, you must become its slave.”
-- Richard Mitchell, in "Less than words can say", p. 180
“Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.”
-- President James A. Garfield (1831-1881), lay preacher
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer
“If a thing is absolutely true, how can it not also be a lie? An absolute must contain its opposite.”
-- Charlotte Painter, writer/educator
“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), American judge
“We’re either going to save the world or no one will be saved.”
-- Maurice Strong, Canadian businessman and internationalist http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maurice_strong.html
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about?” l
-- Maurice Strong, Canadian businessman and internationalist http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maurice_strong.htm
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
-- Japanese Proverb
International Ministry:
*“No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.”
-- Robert M. Gates, former CIA Director, President of Texas A&M University
“He who introduces into public office the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
-- Ronald Reagan, then CA governor (1911-2004)
“Europe is 'committing demographic suicide, systematically depopulating itself,' according to [U.S. biographer of Pope John Paul II George] Weigel.”
-- James P. Gannon, “Is God dead in Europe?” USAToday op ed, posted 1/8/2006 [Link]
“A young man from a wealthy family went to college to major in business management and engineering. He was tall, shy and very respectful of others. He developed a friendship with one of his professors and it completely changed his life. The articulate professor's lectures and example of discipline, self-denial and devotion to his faith transformed this quiet student. This professor galvanized his life by radically changing his worldview, his direction and his ambitions; he finally found a purpose in life.
The year was 1974. The university was the Jedda Abdul-Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. And the student was Osama bin Laden.”
-- Steve Douglass, president of Campus Crusade in a CCCI letter, July 2004
Leadership:
“The church is not made up of spiritual giants; only broken men can lead others to the cross.”
-- David J. Bosch, Afrikaner Dutch Reformed pastor and missionary
“Who would lead must follow truth.”
--Bumper sticker
“A vision without a task makes a visionary. A task without a vision makes a drudgery. But a vision with a task makes a missionary.”
-- Mel Heal, missionary
“Get involved...the world is run by people who show up.”
-- Bumper sticker
“One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.”
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British utilitarian philosopher
“Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.”
-- Henri Bergson (1859-1941), French philosopher
Life/Death/Power:
“Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.”
-- N. T. Wright, British theologian
“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”
-- Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida leader and terrorist
“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British atheistic philosopher
*“The only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.”
-- Seattle Pastor Mark Driscoll
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
-- Voltaire (1694-1778), French atheistic philosopher
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“The evidence for the Resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.”
-- Anthony Flew, skeptic British philosopher in Philosophia Christi
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
-- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), First Lady
“Don't be afraid that your life will end. Be afraid that it will never begin.”
-- Grace Hansen, American dance director (1913-)
“Real life does not come naturally. It is counterintuitive. It is a skill we have to learn. That's because the way to real life is not something we get, but something we give.“
-- J. P. Moreland, philosopher, in The Lost Virtue of Happiness (2006)
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: 'Wow! What a ride!'”
- Robert Wickman, businessman
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
-- Martin Luther King Jr., (1929-1968), American civil rights leader
“You can kill us, but you cannot do us any real harm.”
-- Justin Martyr (100-165), martyred in Rome
“In practice, communism is nothing less than sheer barbarism that makes even the horrors of Nazism pale in comparison. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii outlines that barbarism in his book Death by Government, a comprehensive detailing of the roughly 170 million people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century. From 1917 to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union murdered about 62 million of its own people. During Mao Zedong’s reign, 35,236,000, possibly more, Chinese citizens were murdered. By comparison, Hitler’s Nazis managed to murder 21 million of its citizens and citizens in nations they conquered. Adding these numbers to the 60 million lives lost in war makes the 20th Century mankind’s most brutal era…. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That’s why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.”
-- Walter Williams, “The [Colorado Springs] Gazette”, 8/16/06, p. M6 (reprinted in The American Christian College Journal, 11/06, p. 6)
Military/Battle/War/Conflict/Offense-Defense/Sports:
“Everywhere in the world the sight of a twelve-man squad of GIs brought joy to people's hearts. Because the sight of those American kids meant...they had come not to conquer or terrorize but to liberate.”
-- Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002), American historian
“War is deceit.”
-- Mohammed (571-632), Prophet of Islam
“It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you've got to have is faith and discipline when you're not yet a winner.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
“It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.”
-- Paul “Bear” Bryant (1913-1983), football coaching legend of Alabama's Crimson Tide
*“Who has greater combat than he that labors to overcome himself?”
-- Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), Catholic theologian
*“One good spy is worth 10,000 soldiers.”
-- Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, circa 5th Century BC
*“The best players don't win championships. The best team players win championships.”
-- John Wooden, former UCLA coach
“Vine, Vidi, Vici.” (Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered.”)
-- Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), Roman military and political leader
“It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
*“The most exhilarating thing in life is to be shot at with no effect.”
-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister
*“Defense wins championships.”
-- Numerous coaches
*“In war, you win or lose, live or die - and the difference is just an eyelash.”
-- Douglas McArthur, (1880-1964), American general in WW 2
*“In war, those who believe in tolerance have lost before the first battle begins.”
-- International student missionary and pastor Bill Perry
*“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British utilitarian philosopher
“When it comes to the culture, there's no such thing as peaceful coexistence. If we're not defending truth, fighting for Christian values in all of life, the truth will be sacrificed on the altar of mainstream secularism.
-- Chuck Colson & Anne Morse, Christianity Today, Vol. 48, No. 4, Page 112 (2004)
“Does this sound like a militant call to arms? I hope so. I can think of nothing more important? God will judge us harshly if we stand around enjoying the warm glow of our culture's approval - while the culture crumbles.”
-- Chuck Colson & Anne Morse, Christianity Today, Vol. 48, No. 4, Page 112 (2004)
“An appeal to arms and the God of hosts is all that is left us. But we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery... Forbid it Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”
-- Patrick Henry (1736-1799), American patriot
“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
-- Wayne Gretsky, hockey great
*“Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief . . . (But) we tried to rig it up as an intercom in our houses and cabins and boats and cars - not to call in fire power for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask for more comforts in the den.”
-- John Piper, pastor, author and theologian
“Winning is not a sometime thing: it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do the right thing once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
*“Aggressive fighting for the right is the greatest sport in the world.”
-- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
“Prayer is not a preparation for work, it IS work. Prayer is not a preparation for the battle, it IS the battle. Prayer is two-fold: definite asking and definite waiting to receive.”
-- Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), Scottish pastor and Bible teacher
*“If life has taught me anything, it is that one must fight.”
-- Ella Winter (1898-1980), American journalist
“If self-preservation is that important, then there is no point in going in the first place. God looks for children who are willing to die for him if necessary.”
-- Unnamed Chinese house church leader, when asked about the cost of evangelizing in Muslim lands.
“That general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”
-- Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, circa 5th Century BC
*“Jesus said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His church. It dawned on me one day that a gate is not an offensive weapon? Gates are not a threat, they are defensive, and the gates Jesus was talking about aren't pearly ones-they're the gates of hell! The church is to be on the offense, not the defense? It is time we stopped being intimidated by a gate!? We are so defensive that it's offensive!”
-- Neil Cole, church planter
*“It is as if Jesus had parachuted into enemy territory, gathered followers, trained them, and then set them loose behind enemy lines with the intent of taking more and more territory from the other king [Satan]. Taking that territory is done through freeing those who are captive to and oppressed by the enemy.”
-- Charles Kraft, missionary/author
“...The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), British scholar and deist
*“We win our games in practice. We learn and follow the fundamentals of our game better than anyone in the league. All of our games are won in practice.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
“You know a constellation of imperishable values. Live by the mighty truth and power of God. Live above the sludge of a sick society. Live among dispirited humans as the vanguard of peace and good news. Remember, our Commander in Chief has no use for tin soldiers.”
-- Carl F. H. Henry (1913-2003), Christian theologian
“Life has meaning only in the struggle. Victory and defeat are in the hands of God, so let us celebrate the struggle.”
-- Old Swahili warrior proverb
“Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.”
-- Dr. Thomas F. Jones Jr. (1916-1981), President of University of South Carolina
“Only those who one day fight for freedom are worthy of it.”
-- Lyrics of a song in Cuba
“There are no victories at discount prices.”
-- President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), American general during WW 2
*“Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.”
-- George S. Patton (1885-1945), American general
*“Total victory is the only acceptable goal in a mind-control war because humanity is diminished so long as a single mind remains trapped in superstition [supernatural religion] by programming or choice.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“Our business, like any other, is to be learned by constant practice and experience; and our experience is to be had in war, not at reviews.”
-- Sir John Moore (1761-1809), British General
“It is not I that smite, stab, and slay, but God and my prince, for my hand and my body are now their servants.”
-- Martin Luther (1483-1536), Reformation leader
“An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”
-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), British philosopher and deist
“What is the office of the duly ordained soldiery? To defend the church, to assail infidelity, to venerate the priesthood, to protect the poor from injuries...to pour out their blood for their brothers...and, if need be, to lay down their lives. The high praises of God are in their throats, and two-edged swords are in their hands.”
-- John of Salisbury (1110-1180), English scholastic philosopher
*“Pain is temporary; quitting lasts forever.”
-- Lance Armstrong, American world champion cyclist
“In thus sending out his trainees, [Jesus] set afoot a perpetual world revolution: one that is still in process and will continue until God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.... He has chosen to accomplish this with and, in part, through his students.”
-- USC Professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, pp. 14-15.
“The human measure of a human life is its income; the divine measure of a life is its outgo, its overflow its contribution to the welfare of all.... If every word spoken in behalf of truth has its influence and every deed done for the right weighs in the final account, it is immaterial to the Christian whether his eyes behold victory or whether he dies in the midst of conflict.”
-- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), lawyer and politician
“On the battlefield the real enemy is fear and not the bayonet and the bullet.”
-- Robert Jackson (1892-1954), Supreme Court Justice
“In war, never be neutral. The victor will consider you part of his spoils, and the vanquished will have no room for you in his hiding place.”
-- Anonymous
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that point.”
-- Martin Luther (1483-1536), Reformation leader
“Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.”
-- President James A. Garfield (1831-1881), lay preacher
“To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”
-- Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), French dramatist
“The winning of war -- the effectiveness in such things -- is in the heart, in the determination, in the faith. It is in our beliefs in our country, in our God, everything that goes to make up America.”
-- President Dwight Eisenhower, Dec. 14, 1953
“Get used to the fact that your life is lived in the context of warfare. Every breath you take is an act of war. To survive and thrive in the midst of the spiritual battle in which you live, seek a faith context and experience that will enhance your capacity to be Christlike. This mission demands singleminded commitment and a disregard for the criticism of those who lack the same dedication to the cause of Christ. You answer to only one Commander in Chief, and only you will give an explanation for your choices. Do whatever you have to do to prove that you fear God, you love Him, and you serve Him-yes, that you live only for Him.
-- George Barna, church researcher, in Revolution (2005), pp. 26-27.
“The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice.”
-- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), Thayer Award Acceptance Address, West Point, NY, 5/12/62.
“Turning the other cheek isn't submissive. It's defiant.”
-- Roy H. William, advertising guru
“Safety isn't the ultimate goal. True exemplary conduct is. What is important is that whatever does happen to me I will do absolutely nothing that will shame my character or my God.”
-- Private First Class William Kiessel, 1943 letter to parents from France, cited in Breakpoint, “Faith Under Fire”, 5/28/07
“I never wanted our players to think the Super Bowl was the ultimate. I always talk about ‘Yes, we're going to win, but what are we going to do as we're winning? What are we going to do after we win?’ Winning the Super Bowl is not the destination. It's not an end point. It's what you do from here.”
-- Tony Dungy, Indianapolis Colts head coach, Newsweek 7/16/07
“The promises of God are to the believer…armory, containing all manner of offensive and defensive weapons.”
-- Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), British Reformed Baptist pastor, the “Prince of Preachers”
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”
-- John Adams (1735-1826), US President and Founding Father
“All of us denounce war—all of us consider it man’s greatest stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.”
-- US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again… who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
– President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1910)
“…[O]f the world’s nearly 1,763 wars in recorded history, only 123 can properly be labeled “religious wars.” (See Phillips and Axelrod, "Encyclopedia of Wars") That’s a mere 6.8 percent of the total number of wars recorded in all of human history. And the secular wars of the secular governments upon their own people just within the past century count the dead in the tens of millions! Unfortunately, [Richard] Dawkins and [Christopher] Hitchens want their atheist church to believe that the Stalins and Hitlers of the world were Christians. Atheism, not Christianity, is the culprit as recorded by R. J. Rummel in "Death by Government". The human propensity for myth making is indeed a deeply fixed human condition.”
-- David Noebel, “Ted Turner does a 180 on religion?”, Worldview Matters, posted 4/4/08, http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/3316/David_Noebel
Mind/Thinking:
“If we are to use our minds rightly, we must live in an attitude of constant openness and learning.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 110
“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), American judge
*“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It's your mind you have to convince.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
“If we allow everything access to our mind, we are simply asking to be kept in a state of mental turmoil or bondage. For nothing enters the mind without having an effect for good or evil.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 111
“A closed mind is a sign of hidden doubt.”
-- Harold DeWolf (1905-1986), Boston University theology professor
*“When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”
-- Abigail Adams (1744-1818), Firs Lady, in a letter to her young son, John Quincy Adams, 6th US President
“The needed transformation is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil (and their corresponding cultures) with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught and with a culture of the kingdom of God.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 98
*“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.”
-- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), scientist
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English philosopher
“Your mind will really “talk to you” when you begin to deny fulfillment to your desires, and you will find how subtle and shameless it is.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 156
*“The problem is not only to win souls but to save minds. If you win the whole world and lost the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world.”
-- Charles Malik (1906-1987), President of the UN General Assembly
“The prospering of God's cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 105
*“During my 87 years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.”
-- Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965), business-statesman
*“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
-- John Locke (1632-1704), British Enlightenment philosopher
“What was once thought can never be unthought.”
-- Friedrich Durrenmatt (1921-1990), Swiss author-playwright
*“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British atheistic philosopher
“What we think is, in the adult person, very much a matter of what we allow ourselves to think, and what we feel is very much a matter of what we allow ourselves to feel. Moreover, what we think is very much a matter of what we wish and seek to think, and what we feel is very much a matter of what we wish and seek to feel. In short, the condition of our mind is very much a matter of the direction in which our will is set.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 142
*“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
-- Dorothy Parker, short story writer
“Total victory is the only acceptable goal in a mind-control war because humanity is diminished so long as a single mind remains trapped in superstition [supernatural religion] by programming or choice.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“Attention is riveted on what is tangible, useful, instantly available; the stimulus for deeper thought and reflection may be lacking. Yet human beings have a vital need for time and inner quiet to ponder and examine life and its mysteries... Understanding and wisdom are the fruit of a contemplative eye upon the world, and do not come from a mere accumulation of facts, no matter how interesting.”
-- Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)
“A man's doubts and fears are his worst enemies.”
-- William Wrigley Jr. (1861-1932), businessman
*“What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 104
“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
“When the will is enslaved to a desire, it will in turn enslave the mind.”
-- USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 154
“If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.”
-- Cato (234-149 BC), Roman statesman-historian
“Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.”
-- Ashley Montagu (1905-1999), English anthropologist
“There is no longer a Christian mind.”
-- Harry Blamires, opening line in his book, The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think (1978)
“Who is the enemy? Who is holding back more rapid movement to the better society that is reasonable and possible with available resources?...Evil, stupidity, apathy, the 'system' are not the enemy...The real enemy is fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent, vital people...In short, the enemy is strong natural servants who have the potential to lead but do not lead, or who choose to follow a non-servant.”
-- Robert K. Greenleaf (1900-1990), former president of AT&T
“Our minds are deeply spiritual, and so developing our minds must be a spiritual discipline.”
-- James Emory White, president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary and author, in A Mind for God
“Mental rehab is way tougher than the physical part... [You think] I'm tired of doing the same thing [exercising] all day. It's tough, but you've got to overcome it.”
-- Will Poole, former Miami Dolphin who spent a year on injured reserve recovering from a blown out knee in 2005 (Sun-Sentinel, 8/7/06, D7).
“(God is speaking) I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it... Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.”
-- New Age promoter Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God
“Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.”
-- Bergen Baldwin Evans (1904-1978), Northwestern University professor
“If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.”
-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1837-1958), American author-essayist
“No one who is rightly minded turns from true belief to false.”
-- Justin Martyr (100-161), Apostolic Father, Christian apologist
“Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it... It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.”
-- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British humanist novelist/essayist
“After surveying more than 3700 Brisbane-based 21-year-olds, [Australian researcher Dr. Rosemary Aird] found spirituality and self-focused religions may undermine a person’s mental health. “‘I had a look at two different beliefs — one was a belief in God, associated with traditional religions, and the other was the newer belief in a spiritual or higher power other than God,’ Dr. Aird said. “The research found non-traditional belief was linked with higher rates of anxiety, depression, disturbed and suspicious ways of thinking and anti-social behaviour.”
-- Shannon Malloy, "Brisbane Times", 1/17/08 www.religionnewsblog.com/20414/diy-religion
“A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.”
-- J. P. Morgan (1837-1913), American banker, corporate financier, philanthropist and art collector
“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities... With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Miscellaneous:
“The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other.”
-- Marya Mannes (1904-1990), author-journalist
“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.”
-- President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in a letter to J. Norville, 1805
“Somebody, somewhere, love me.”
-- Repeated phrase in the diaries of atheist Madeline Murray O'Hare (1919-1995?)
“Well of course I believe in [the Virgin Birth]; it's so absolutely beautiful, it has to be true whether it happened or not.”
-- Unnamed 18-year-old Christian student
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
-- George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish minister and writer
“A big issue in every gay man's background is father bonding and I was always drawn to a father figure.”
-- Mike Ensley (2005), former homosexual
*75% of college freshman are “searching for meaning and purpose in life.”
-- UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 2005
“If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm.”
-- Vince Lombardi (1913-1970), 5-time NFL champion coach including Super Bowls I & II
*“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.”
-- President George Washington, Aug. 10, 1798
*“I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician and philosopher
*“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
-- W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), American statistician, college professor and mathematical physicist
“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”
-- Harold Wilson (1916-1995), British Prime Minister
*“To live outside the law, you must be honest.”
-- Bob Dylan, rock icon
“Those under twenty-five are now the fastest-growing group filing for bankruptcy.”
-- Alissa Quart (2004)
“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
-- Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
*“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer and Christian thinker
*“In a world apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if life is to proceed. The will or spirit cannot-psychologically cannot-sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 52
“Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.”
-- Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995), Gray Panthers founder
“Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.”
-- Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973), American fighter pilot
“Any fool can criticize, and most of them do.”
-- C. Garbett, Catholic Archbishop
“I frankly think the soul or personage comes in when the fetus is accepted by the mother.”
-- James McMahon, abortionist
“Tolerance sounds like a virtue, and at times it may be. [But should] a parent be tolerant of behavior that is harming a child? Or the police be tolerant of criminals who prey upon others? Should doctors be tolerant of disease, or public schoolteachers tolerant of any answer on an exam, no matter how wrong?”
-- Dave Hunt (2005), Christian discernment writer
“To allow lust (or strong desires) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God's.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 210
“Worse than being blind, is to have no vision.”
-- Helen Keller (1880-1968), blind and deaf educator
“I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God; that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City.”
-- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“If we fail to reproduce ourselves, and pass the torch of life into the hands of the next generation, Christianity would be over in just one generation. Yet, because of the POWER of multiplication, we are also just one generation away from worldwide fulfillment of the Great Commission-the choice is ours.”
-- Neil Cole, church planter
“Feelings...give us a sense of being alive. Without feelings we have no interest in things, no inclination to action.... That is why so many people become dependent upon 'substances' and activities that give them feeling, even if the dependence badly harms them and those near them. Such a condition is also the frequent background to suicide. Harmful feeling...will eventually be taken by a human being as better than no feeling at all.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 121
“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”
-- President George Washington (1732-1799)
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
-- Erika Harold, Miss America (2003)
“Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”
-- Vincent Damon Furnier, aka Alice Cooper, rock musician
“Only God truly forgives, man sometimes forgives, nature never forgives.”
-- Jerome Lejeune (1925-1994), French pediatrician and geneticist
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
-- Bumper sticker
“I was a very idealistic, very romantic kid in a very typically Midwestern Methodist repressed home. There was no show of affection of any kind, and I escaped to dreams and fantasies produced, by and large, by the music and the movies of the '30s.”
-- Hugh Hefner, Playboy pornographer
“There is nothing outside the text.”
-- Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), French deconstructionist philosopher
“In cases where the person commits an extremely grave concern, he or she shall be given the death penalty.”
-- Article 47, North Korean Criminal Code (1987)
*“Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
-- George Washington Carver (1864-1943), American botanist and educator
“Clinical depression is an extreme form of a 'bad mood.'”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, pp. 127-128.
*“The barber on the street in ancient Constantinople had a sharper understanding of the deity of Christ than does the average evangelical today.”
-- Christianity Today, “Who and Where are the Evangelicals?” December 21, 1979
*“Of all the arts, the most important is the cinema.”
-- Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), Communist dictator and Soviet Union founder
“Even professing Christians, by and large, devote to their spiritual growth and well-being a tiny fraction of the time they devote to their body, and it is even tinier fraction if we include what they worry about.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 160
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-- Plato (427-347 BC), Greek philosopher
“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.“
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American philosopher, naturalist, transcendentalist and pacifist
“Follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
-- Antony Flew, British philosophy professor and skeptic who renounced his life's work in atheism and accepted theism at age 81.
“The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and Christian thinker
“Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.”
-- President George Washington (1732-1799)
“After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.”
-- Yo-Yo Ma, World renowned cellist (Sun-Sentinel, 11/8/05, A-4)
“Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
-- Frank Herbert (1920-1986), sci-fi writer
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”
-- Margaret Young (1892-1969), singer
“He that believes dares trust God for the morrow, and is not more solicitous [anxious] for the next year than he is for that which is past.”
-- Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667 ), British clergyman, quoted in Gold Cord by Amy Carmichael
“If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.”
-- Edith Wharton (1862-1937), writer
*“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
-- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), short story writer
“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”
-- Tom Robbins, actor, director, producer, screenwriter
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, that is the only thing that ever has.”
-- Margaret Mead (1901-1978), anthropologist
*“Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
-- Omar M. Ahmad, Board Chair, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
*“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
-- Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher
“There is no security on this Earth; there is only opportunity.”
-- Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), American general in WW 2
“American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés.”
-- Os Guinness, philosopher/writer
“Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“So, if someone asks my advice, it is always the same: Trust Jesus Christ. I wouldn't trust the Buddha for a bushel of oranges. Often when people talk about the Buddha they don't realize that from a Buddhist point of view, the best thing that could happen to you would be for you to stop existing. The best thing. That's not much of a gospel.
“I always say, if you've got someone who honestly is better than Jesus, trust them. And if you don't, trust him. By all means, don't trust yourself, because you're the one who's got the problem.”
-- Dr. Dallas Willard, professor of philosophy, USC
“Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”
-- Alice Paul (1885-1977), drafter of original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923
“I don't know much any more what right and wrong even is. The demons have taken over.”
-- Convicted sex offender and murderer Joseph Edward Duncan III (2005)
*“Every human being is wired for God.”
-- Harvey Benson, Harvard professor
“Look for the coming man.”
-- Adolf Hitler (1889-945) to his secretary Traudl Junge (1920-2002) shortly before the dictator's suicide.
“Excitement and reward exist only outside your comfort zone. You'll experience neither of them until you make yourself do something you really don't want to do. So what is it that scares the hell out of you?”
-- Roy H. Williams, “The Wizard,” advertising guru
“He whom you would change you must first love.”
-- Martin Luther King (1929-1968), civil rights leader and minister
*[About Christopher Columbus:] “When he started out he didn't know where he was going, when he got there he didn't know where he was, and when he got back he didn't know where he had been.”
-- Anonymous
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945 (1892-1984), German pastor
*“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist
“Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.”
-- Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, to Edward Nawotka in an interview.
*“Storytellers will be the most valued workers in the 21st Century.”
-- The editors of The Futurist magazine, Nov/Dec, 1996
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience...”
-- Al Gore, former US Vice-President, admitting to overstating the global warming threat in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, May 9, 2006
“Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.”
-- Robert K. Greenleaf (1900-1990), former president of AT&T in Servant Leadership
“I think we were all building a house on false foundations.”
-- Sam Cagnina in the documentary Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family about a 3-some “family” with Steven Margolin and Samantha Singh (BreakPoint radio broadcast, June 15, 2006).
“Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935), American humorist, actor, entertainer
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
-- Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), British writer
“Music is worship: whether it's worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer...the smoke goes upwards...to God or something you replace God with...usually yourself.”
-- Bono, singer/musician and U2 frontman
“Jesus Christ is too important to be left to the theologians.”
-- Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), European Lutheran scholar and historian
“Christ is more of an artist than the artists; He works in the living spirit and the living flesh; He makes men instead of statues.”
-- Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch artist/painter
“If you believe in God, you go to Heaven when you die. If you don't, you go to North Korea.”
-- Pastor Lee, a former prisoner of North Korea
“The hardest thing about being a communist is trying to predict the past.”
-- Milovan Djilas (1911-1995), Yugoslav communist author-politician
“Stem-cell research on embryos is an even worse excuse for the slaughter of life than abortion. No woman is even being spared an inconvenience this time.... It's just harvest and slaughter, harvest and slaughter, harvest and slaughter.”
-- Ann Coulter, legal correspondent in Godless, page 195
“The American culture has passed the demand for privacy now. I think it's the demand for something else. I call it the demand for anonymity. People actually want to be able to do things in public that nobody remembers?to be able to do things on the streets and in the bright lights and remain anonymous.”
-- John Ashcraft, former US Attorney General (HUMAN EVENTS, Vol. 62, No. 36, 10/23/06, p. 16)
“We're so accessible, we're inaccessible. We can't find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves.... We want to wear an iPod as much to listen to our playlists as to block out the rest of the world and protect ourselves from all that noise. We are everywhere - except where we actually are physically.”
-- Linda Stone, technologist (to columnist Thomas Friedman, Sun-Sentinel, 11/2/06, P13)
“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the donut, but the pessimist sees the hole.”
-- McLandburgh Wilson, American writer (b. 1915)
“We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is disappearing.”
-- R. D. Laing (1927-1989), Scottish psychiatrist
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
-- Margaret Mead (1901-1978), American anthropologist and professor
“The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.”
-- Peter Drucker, managerial trainer in The Daily Drucker; 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done (Peter Drucker and Joseph A Maciariello; New York: Harper, 2004), p. 2.
“Heroes aren’t athletes who set new sports records, or Hollywood actors who make ‘daring’ films or politicians who make bold promises. Heroes are people who place themselves at risk for the benefit of others.”
-- Oliver North (b. 1943), political commentator and former US Marine
“...[C]urrent lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class -- involving high meat intake use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing -- are not sustainable. A shift is necessary, which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations...”
-- Maurice Strong , opening speech at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
“If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”
– Daniel Webster (1782-1852), Secretary of State and politician
“Do not expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”
-- Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), American president
“They’re blaming it [global warming] on humans, which is crazy. We’re not the cause of it.”
-- Dr. William Gray, CSU weather researcher/predictor (AP, The Colorado Springs Gazette, 4/28/07, p. A9).
“We don’t know one millionth of one percent of anything.”
-- Thomas Edison (1847-1931), American scientist/inventor/businessman
“The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be.”
-- Socrates (ca 470-399 BC), foundational Greek philosopher
“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do.”
-- President Woodrow Wilson, (1956-1924)
“I don’t have any friends. Every friend that I’ve had, practically, has wanted to borrow money or something and of course once they borrow money from you, you cant’ be friends anymore.”
-- Jack Whitaker, West Virginia’s winner of the 2002 Powerball lottery ($315 million).
“Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear”
-- Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, Sept. 1979, "Time" magazine (8/23/07)
“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”
-- Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist, satirist and Christian apologist
“Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love – and now become as the most hated one – the one – You have thrown away as unwanted – unloved. I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on Whom I can cling – no, No One. – Alone … Where is my Faith – even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness – My God – how painful is this unknown pain – I have no Faith – I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart -- & make me suffer untold agony. “So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy – If there be God – please forgive me – When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. – I am told that God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”
-- Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, Sept. 1979, "Time" magazine (8/23/07)
“Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.”
-- Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist, satirist and Christian apologist
“I’m searching for loopholes.”
-- Actor W. C. Fields, (1880-1946), speaking to a friend shortly before his death about why he was reading a Bible
“We’re either going to save the world or no one will be saved.” l
-- Maurice Strong, Canadian businessman and internationalist http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maurice_strong.htm
“Private opinion creates public opinion…That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.”
-- Jan Struther (Joyce Anstruther/Placzek, 1901-53), British poet
“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist, poet and Transcendentalist leader
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about?”
-- Maurice Strong, Canadian businessman and internationalist http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maurice_strong.html
“It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; it is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in allusion of rapid global warming. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.... I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e., Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you ‘believe in.’ It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril... In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling.”
-- John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel on the frenzy over Global Warming, http://www.kusi.com/home/11131801.html
“Everyone thinks of changing the world. No one thinks of changing himself.”
-- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, pacifist/anarchist, educational reformer and philosopher
Family dinners are “more important than church attendance, more important even than grades at school… [E]very year, eating supper together regularly as a family tops the list of variables that are within our control… Supper is about nourishment of all kinds.”
-- Miriam Weinstein's, The Surprising Power of Family Meals (Mark Earley, BreakPoint, 11/23/07)
“We’re brainwashing our children…They’re going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It’s ridiculous… We’ll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was… The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures… It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong… But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don’t care about grants.”
-- Dr. William Gray, Colorado State University professor and hurricane forecaster, at UNC lecture 10/07 http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html
“In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
-- Unknown
“You know how many seeds are in an apple. But you don’t know how many apples are in a seed.”
-- Rev. Robert Schuller (b. 1926), former Crystal Cathedral senior pastor
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
“Divorce is bad for the environment… ‘Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households. The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere,’ said Jianguo ‘Jack’ Liu, of MSU’s Fisheries and Wildlife. Among the findings: * In the United States alone in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households. Thirty-eight million extra rooms were needed with associated costs for heating and lighting. * In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households in these countries. * The numbers of divorced households in these countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000. * The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.”
-- http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3268/content.htm
“Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.”
-- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them.”
-- Utilitarian American philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
“The ocean-atmosphere is the most complex physical system humans have to deal with. Meteorologists use computer models to forecast the weather. With the most complex models and fastest computers, weather forecasts are useful out to only about 10 days. Beyond that, they give results that have no relation to reality. Predicting climate variability is more difficult….So look skeptically at anyone who says they can model the climate 50 years in the future. Exhibit A is the forecast for the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. According to the best models and best authorities it was supposed to be an acive and severe tropical storm season. The reality was that is was one of the most benign….The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperature-0wise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.”
-- Gene J. Pfeffer, member of the American Meteorologist Society, "The (Colorado Springs) Gazette", 8/1/07, p. M7.
“Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, ‘God, it’s got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn’t, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be.” What's the answer? “I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find."
-- Tom Brady, New England Patriot quarterback, 60 Minutes interview 12/23/07, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/03/60minutes/main1008main1008148_page3.shtml
“A little integrity is better than any career.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1883), American essayist/poet and Transcendentalist movement leader
“[M]y religious [i.e., Christian] belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”
-- Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-1863), Confederate General
“In practice, communism is nothing less than sheer barbarism that makes even the horrors of Nazism pale in comparison. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii outlines that barbarism in his book Death by Government, a comprehensive detailing of the roughly 170 million people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century. From 1917 to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union murdered about 62 million of its own people. During Mao Zedong’s reign, 35,236,000, possibly more, Chinese citizens were murdered. By comparison, Hitler’s Nazis managed to murder 21 million of its citizens and citizens in nations they conquered. Adding these numbers to the 60 million lives lost in war makes the 20th Century mankind’s most brutal era…. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That’s why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.”
-- Walter Williams, “The [Colorado Springs] Gazette”, 8/16/06, p. M6 (reprinted in The American Christian College Journal, 11/06, p. 6)
“Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.”
-- Hesketh Pearson (1887-1964), British biographer
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
-- “The 10 Cannots” by William J. H. Boetcker (1873 – 1962) German born American religious leader and influential public speaker
[Speaking about politics, but it could apply to several things:] “You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool.”
-- George Orwell (pen name for Eric Arthur Blair), (1903-1950), British author and journalist
“Political correctness is the art of almost saying something true.”
-- Dr. Ergun Caner, President of Liberty Seminary
“Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
-- Polycarp (~69-~155), Apostolic Father and early martyr www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2008/feb21.html
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
“Basically, I wanted redemption for the way I lived my life beforehand, and that was the drugs, the drink, the loose sex, whatever…”
-- Elton John (b. 1948), rock icon/singer/musician, on why he is helping so many with AIDS through charity work (in 2008)
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
“Folks, with 70% of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi[sexual], we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.”
-- Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 2/08 at NGLTF’s annual conference (Ed Vitagliano - AFA Journal, April 2008 (http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/stories.aspx?id=73945)
“A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is.”
-- Karl Krauss (1874-1936), Czech-born ethnic Jewish writer and critic of the Third Reich
“There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
-- Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), former slave, educator and African-American leader in "My Larger Education" (1911)
“In a quest to lower my impact on the environment, I calculated our [family’s] carbon footprint if we cut our use of electricity and natural gas in half, switched our two cars for a single Toyota Prius and reduced our annual mileage by half, tripled our train travel, and never took an airplane. Furthermore, what if we became vegetarians, ate only local organic food in season, bought only second-hand clothes, furniture and appliances, never went to movies, bars or restaurants, and recycled or composted all our waste? Even then our combined carbon footprint would be 7.3 tons per year, but that would get us just below the world average of 4 tons per capita annually... The creators of Carbon Footprint claim that everyone in the world must eventually emit no more than 2 tons of carbon dioxide per year. When did Americans last emit so little carbon dioxide? Around 1870.”
-- Ronald Bailey (b. 1953), science editor of Reason magazine (The Patriot Post, 05 May 2008)
Muslim/Islam:
“Our revolution is a part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine. Palestinians are part of the Arab nation. Therefore, the entire Arab nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best is yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West.... To advance step by step. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.
--George Habash, Marxist leader of the PLO in 1972, told directly to Oriana Fallaci, recorded in her book, The Force of Reason (2006)
“More Muslims have come to Christ in the past two decades than at any other time in history.”
-- David Garrison, Church Planting Movements, How God Is Redeeming a Lost World, WIFTake Resources, 2004
“A young man from a wealthy family went to college to major in business management and engineering. He was tall, shy and very respectful of others. He developed a friendship with one of his professors and it completely changed his life. The articulate professor's lectures and example of discipline, self-denial and devotion to his faith transformed this quiet student. This professor galvanized his life by radically changing his worldview, his direction and his ambitions; he finally found a purpose in life.
The year was 1974. The university was the Jedda Abdul-Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. And the student was Osama bin Laden.”
-- Steve Douglass, president of Campus Crusade, CCCI letter, July 2004
“If we knew our religion, missionaries would be no threat to us.”
-- Zaman (Turkey) Newspaper editorial after thousands of New Testaments were handed out in 2004.
*“Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”
-- Omar M. Ahmad, chairman of Counsel of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) July,1998
“Our way is one of radical combat against depravity, and America is the original root of depravity.”
-- 1985 communiqué from Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah
“My children are the most precious thing in my life. That is why I sacrificed them for a greater cause-for Allah, who is more precious than them. My son is not more precious than his God, he is not more precious than the places holy to Islam, and he is not more precious than his homeland or his Islam.”
-- Umm Nidal, mother of suicide terrorist Muhammad Farhat and Palestinian Legislative Council member (HUMAN EVENTS, 2/13/06, Robert Spencer “Hamas' Mother of Killers,” p. 18.
“We [Muslims] have to be above you. You [Americans] have to be subdued. No regrets. No remorse.”
-- Zacarias Moussaoui, al-Qaeda terrorist at his trial (2006)
“It is absolutely correct to say that if you can't learn from the events of Nazi Germany, you will not be able to grasp the ... danger of the radical Muslim world today. You are simply hiding.”
-- Alfons Heck, former commander of the Hitler Youth, in "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", 2006
“I still believe that one of the first tasks for the international community today should be to reconstruct its experience with Nazism and cope with this barbaric, dangerous [Radical Islamic] culture as it did with the Nazi culture. If this isn't done, the coming days could be very eventful and their implications for the whole of humanity would be much more severe than those of the World War.”
-- Muhammad al al-Sheikh, “Radical Islam worse than Nazism,” Al- Jazeera newspaper, 7/10/05 (see www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3128227,00.html)
“Over 90% of nations in which the majority of the people consider themselves Christians are republics. Relative freedom, choice, enlightenment, and prosperity reign. Over 90% of nations in which the majority of the people are Muslims are dictatorships in which the people have relatively no freedoms, choice, access to truth, or prosperity.
So what is it that causes one culture to embrace freedom, choice, enlightenment, and prosperity and the other to be hostile to these things? The answers are as obvious as the evidence is clear. The Judeo-Christian Scriptures are based upon knowing and understanding truth and embracing it while condemning deception. Yahweh wants people to be free to choose. The Islamic scriptures are the opposite. The fifth surah says that Muslims who question the Qur'an will lose their faith and become apostates. The fourth surah tells good Muslims to murder apostates.”
-- Craig Winn, “The War on Terror - An Open Letter,” www.prophetofdoom.net/article.aspx?g=401&i=48002
“Christianity...does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood.”
-- Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi, Iraqi cleric (Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/06, 26A)
“Allah is our objective. The Prophet [Mohammed] is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying on the way to Allah is our highest hope.”
-- Motto of the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington Times, 6/17/06, p. A 11.
“Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations.”
-- Ibn Khaldun, 14th Century Islamic jurist, the most prominent such jurist ever, (www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Islam/Fighting_Jihad_at_H.html?seemore=y)
“Today there are more Muslims at prayer on Fridays in Britain, France, or Germany than there are Christians at mass or liturgy in those countries on Sundays.”
-- Srdja Trifkovic, Serbian American scholar (www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST101904.html)
“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”
-- Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida leader and terrorist
“The government should abolish co-education. Quaid-i-Azam University has become a brothel. Its female professors and students roam in objectionable dresses. . . . Sportswomen are spreading nudity. I warn the sportswomen of Islamabad to stop participating in sports. . . . Our female students have not issued the threat of throwing acid on the uncovered faces of women. However, such a threat could be used for creating the fear of Islam among sinful women. There is no harm in it. There are far more horrible punishments in the hereafter for such women.”
-- The News, Islamabad, 24 April 2007, “Time to get tough on Lal Masjid issue” (http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=52663)
“In his fatwa, Mufti Khalid Shah terms all employees of NGOs as agents of Jews and Christians. Shah stresses that there is no need to ask permission to kill and that everyone should declare jihad. He also adds that the time has come to use weapons of mass destruction against his enemies.”
-- ABC News website report, 12/06 (www.abcnews.com)
“This incident [their first planned terrorist attack in the US] is the first in a series of incidents to come in a plight to defend and propagate traditional Islam in its purity. We are not extremists, radicals or terrorists. We are only servants of Allah.”
-- Kevin James, founder of radical Muslim gang Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS, in a planned press release; he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges against the US with Levar Haley Washington in Southern CA (USA Today, www.usatoday.com/news
“Within Europe…the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.”
-- Mullah Krekar, Muslim jihadist living in Norway (“Canada Bans Truth-Telling,” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 44, 12/24/07, p. 11)
“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
-- Houari Boumedienne, Algerian Muslim leader speaking to the United Nations in 1974 (“Canada Bans Truth-Telling,” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 44, 12/24/07, p. 11)
“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
-- Houari Boumedienne, Algerian Muslim leader speaking to the United Nations in 1974 (“Canada Bans Truth-Telling,” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 44, 12/24/07, p. 11)
“Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor…[T]he conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology.”
-- Al-Jazeera’s Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi, a ‘moderate’ reformer in the West (“Canada Bans Truth-Telling,” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 44, 12/24/07, p. 11)
“Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all….There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of Mohammed] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim!”
-- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), Shi’i Islamic cleric, Muslim philosopher, and political revolutionary leader of Iran (“CAIR Seeks To Silence Critics, ” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 43, 12/17/07, p. 21)
“Democracy sounds nice enough, [but] not to a Muslim.”
-- Usman Badar, president of the Muslim Student Association, University of New South Wales, Australia, April, 2006 (“CAIR Seeks To Silence Critics, ” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 43, 12/17/07, p. 21)
“[The devil uses] liberty and democracy to achieve his plans.”
-- Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi in 2006 (“CAIR Seeks To Silence Critics, ” HUMAN EVENTS, Vol 63, No. 43, 12/17/07, p. 21)
“How dreadful are the curses which [Islam] lays on its [adherents]! Besides the fanatical frenzy…there is this fearful fatalistic apathy…. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it…. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, [Islam] is a militant and proselytizing faith.”
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), in The River War (1899), Vol. 2, p. 248, quoted in The American Christian College Journal (12/06)
“I seek refuge in God against the accursed Satan [i.e., America] in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful,” [praying for] “victory over those who disbelieve [non-Muslims, including all non-Muslim Americans.]”
-- Imam Muhammad Khan of the Islamic Center of Des Moines, in his opening prayer of the Iowa legislative session, 1/08.
“The souls of the martyrs dwell inside the bellies of green birds [that roost] on chandeliers hanging from the royal throne [of Allah in Paradise]. They roam freely in Paradise, and then come to roost on the chandeliers... Sister... [think] what a [wonderful] life that is, how [wonderful] Paradise is, and what we miss living here [in this world]... You know that a martyr does not die. He lives, and will never know death, for it is said [in Koran 2:153]: ‘And do not speak of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead; nay, [they] live, but you do not perceive [it].’”
-- Umm Hamza Al-Shahid, an Al-Hesbah (www.al-hesbah.org/v) subscriber in a message, “Secure Yourself a Chandelier under the Throne [in Paradise],” encouraging Muslim women to carry out suicide bombings, (from D. Hazan in “Women's Forums on Islamist Websit
“If you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you.”
-- Zahra Maladan, Lebanese woman’s magazine editor warning her son after the funeral of Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya (Wall Street Journal, 3/3/08)
“We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”
Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah (“Radical Islam’s plan for World Domination”, Ed Vitagliano, AFA Journal, April 2008) http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/stories.aspx?id=73891
Philosophy/Religion:
“I am. I am. I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I ? because ? ugh! I flee.”
-- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher
“I sometimes think that the world will either be saved by psychologists . . . or it will not be saved at all.”
-- Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), American humanist psychologist
“There is nothing outside the text.”
-- Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), French deconstructionist philosopher
“If a thing is absolutely true, how can it not also be a lie? An absolute must contain its opposite.”
-- Charlotte Painter, American writer/educator
Atheists in Europe comprise “an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research. What we are observing instead [of a revival of Christianity] is a re-paganization [in Europe].”
-- Rev. Paul M. Zulehner, Dean of Vienna University's divinity school (Washington Times, 3/4/05).
“The rise of all sorts of paganism is creating a false spirituality that proves to be a more dangerous rival to the Christian faith than atheism.”
-- Rev. Gerald McDermott, Roanoke College (VA) professor of religion and philosophy (Washington Times, 3/4/05)
“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”
-- Margaret Young (1892-1969), American singer
*“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history and culture also becomes a dead people.”
-- Malcolm X (1925-65), civil rights leader
“A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.”
-- Karl Marx (1818-1883), German Jewish philosopher
The atheist worldview of life is “a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“Atheism is a cruel long term business, and I have gone through it to the end.”
-- Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher
“I like to think there's still right and wrong. We blur that a lot. When we celebrate misdeeds instead of portraying them as missteps, we've lost our way a little bit.”
-- Mark Schwann (2005), "One Tree Hill" creator
“Legally speaking, it's not a difficult decision to make. Morally speaking, it's a very difficult decision to make.... But I'm not here to make the moral decision. I'm here to make the legal decisions.... My Jesus is a nice guy and not someone to pick up the phone and...punish me.”
-- Palm Beach County (FL) Circuit Court Judge Ronald Alvarez about deciding to permit a 13-year-old to get an abortion, 5/2-3/05
“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”
-- Emile M. Cioran, Romanian writer and philosopher
“We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings.”
-- Roy Hattersley, “Faith does breed charity,” British newspaper Guardian, Monday September 12, 2005, www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5283079-103390,00.html
“The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.”
-- Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Canadian physician-educator
“Post-Christian man is not the same as Pre-Christian man. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-be and a spouse lost.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1889-1963), Christian apologist and writer, Letters, March 17, 1953
“Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.”
-- Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist, satirist and Christian apologist
“No one returns from Christianity to the same state he was before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1889-1953), Christian apologist and writer, Letters, September 15, 1953
“By beginning with the up-front assumption that nothing is generally true, the thoroughgoing relativist is essentially starting the conversation by saying, ‘I have nothing to say which is necessarily true; it’s your option to regard what I say as either true or false, and in either case you would be right’.”
-- Christiopher C. Shubert, “Challenging Relativism,” The Schwartz Report (Volume 46, Numbr 6, p. 2)
“My mind is not closed…my mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we start out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer…. I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.”
-- Richard Dawkins, Time magazine (Canadian edition), 11/13/06, p. 39 (The American Christian College Journal, 1/08, pp. 6-7)
“Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.”
-- C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), British Reformed Baptist pastor
Sin/Worldliness:
“Worldliness is what any particular culture does to make sin look normal and righteousness look strange.”
-- David Wells, American missionary
“A Christian is not ruined by living in the world, but by the world living in him.”
-- Anonymous
*“All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English philosopher
“Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 106
“Our way is one of radical combat against depravity, and America is the original root of depravity.”
-- 1985 communiqué from terrorist group Hezbollah
“Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.”
-- V. Gene Robinson, first same-sex Episcopal bishop (2004)
“I think it's just the loss of family values. It's the narcissism of our age, of people thinking only of themselves - not even of their family. When you lose those values of morality, you suddenly have no footing. And I think that's when these people think there's no problem with doing evil.”
-- Los Angeles prosecutor David Conn (2004)
“Goodness is, so to speak, itself; badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.”
-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and Christian thinker, in "Mere Christianity"
*“Young men and women are being enticed to think of themselves as two selves, one that is mind and reason in the classroom and another self, 'after hours,' that is all body and passion. They begin to imagine-though few entirely believe it-that they can use (that is, abuse) their bodies as they please for pleasure, and that choosing to do so has nothing to do with their academic studies or future lives. In reality they are following a formula for self-disintegration and failure.”
-- Vigen Guorian, Loyola University professor
“Bodily pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. But when it is exalted to a necessity and we become dependent upon it, then we are slaves of our body and its feelings. Only misery lies ahead.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 173
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
-- Lord Acton (1834-1902), British Baron and historian
“When people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders.”
-- Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Founding Father
“Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.”
-- Renata Adler (b. 1938), American writer/professor
“The world is a dangerous place to live -- not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist
“The heart wants what it wants.”
-- Film producer Woody Allen in 1992, explaining why he ran off with his longtime lover's daughter, with whom he later had 2 children
“The gods had given me almost everything but I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease . . . tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search of new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the rooftop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), secular Irish poet, dramatist and critic
“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
-- Voltaire (1694-1778), French Enlightenment deist philosopher and writer
“To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.”
-- Seneca (4BC-65AD), Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist
“The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.”
-- Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904), attorney and writer
“I don’t care what You said, I’ll do what I want.” It is God’s would be murderer. Sin would un-God God if it could. Sin defiles the conscience. Sin is irrational and forfeits blessing. Sin is painful--it hurts. Sin is damning. Sin is degrading it mares the image of God and man. Like Samson, it cuts the locks of purity and leaves men morally weak. Sin poisons the springs of love and turns beauty in leprosy. Sin defeats the mind, the heart, the will, the affections and it has made a whole world of people-all of mankind- children wrath by nature; objects of God’s wrath. Sin brings man under the domination of Satan and his sick sin system, which he controls. Man and the world is a slave to sin, open rebellion and defiance to God and a slave to Satan.”
-- Unknown
“To pretend to pay homage to God and intend only the advantage of self is, rather, to mock Him than worship Him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied than God glorified, we set God below ourselves. Imagine, that He should submit His own honor to our advantage -- we make our selves more glorious than God.”
-- Stephen Charnock (1628-1680), English Puritan/Presbyterian pastor
Spiritual Life:
*“The man who is intimate with God is never intimidated by man.”
-- Leonard Ravenhill (1907-1994), American church leader
“When man works, man works. When man prays, God works.”
-- Pat Johnson
*“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
-- Jim Elliot (1927-1956), Christian missionary martyr
*“If you lose your soul, there is a danger of its being destroyed. Therefore, you may not love it, since you do not want it to be destroyed. But in not wanting it to be destroyed, you love it.”
-- St. Augustine (354-430), North African theologian and philosopher
“Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”
-- Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), British missionary to China
“Belief is when your whole being is set to act as if something is so.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 248
*“Our wrestling with the enemy can never hope for victory unless this Man [Jesus] has first wrestled with us, has dealt with all that hinders His control, and has reduced us to complete surrender.”
-- 1930 report of China Inland Mission
“God is looking for a few good men in whose hands his glory is safe.”
-- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), American pastor and writer
“You can impress someone from a distance, but you can only impact them up close.”
-- Howard Hendricks, Dallas Seminary professor
“Spiritual influence never coincided with material affluence.”
-- F. F. Bruce (1910-1990), Scottish scholar and theologian
*“That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience.... Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is.”
-- Jürgen Moltmann, German theologian, in Theology of Hope
*“When man ceases to believe in God, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in anything.”
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British philosopher and Christian thinker
*“God creates out of nothing. Until man becomes nothing, God will make nothing of him.”
-- Martin Luther (1483-1536), Reformation leader
*“Remember, the grace of God works with what it brings, not what it finds.”
-- Anonymous college professor
“One thing that sticks out about [former Miami Heat forward] Wayne [Simien] is his desire to see his life influence the world.... Wayne's desire is to reflect a God who has had an impact on his life in a tangible, practical way, not just in religious rhetoric....”
-- Erik Fish, Assoc. Pastor, Morning Star Church, Lawrence, KS (Sun-Sentinel, 10/14/05, p. C14)
“Does Christ commend the famous 'apathy' of the Stoic or the Buddhist elimination of desire? Far from it. The issue is not just feeling or desire, but right feeling or desire, or being controlled by feeling or desire.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 72
*“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
-- Corrie Ten Boom (1892-1983), Dutch Holocaust survivor
“You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God.”
-- Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), British missionary to China
“The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.”
-- John Calvin (1509-64), Reformation theologian
“A man's conception of God creates his attitude toward the hour in which he lives.”
-- G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945), British theologian
“You can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you could trust your doctor and your auto mechanic and not intend to follow their advice. If you don't intend to follow their advice, you simply don't trust them. Period.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 88
“Who would lead must follow truth.”
-- Bumper sticker
“A Christian is not ruined by living in the world, but by the world living in him.”
-- Anonymous
“Discipline yourself so others won't. Outward discipline leads to inward direction.”
-- Anonymous
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader
*“Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief . . . (But) we tried to rig it up as an intercom in our houses and cabins and boats and cars - not to call in fire power for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask for more comforts in the den.”
-- John Piper, pastor, author and theologian
“Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, but few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many inteferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”
-- Leonard Ravenhill (1907-1994), American church leader
“The glory of God is a person fully alive!”
-- Iraneus (125-202 AD), Church father
*“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.”
-- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), American lawyer and politician
“Feelings too must be renovated: old ones removed in many cases, or at least thoroughly modified, and new ones installed or at least heightened into a new prominence.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 117
“The Church is looking for better methods, God is looking for better men?”
-- E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), Christian pastor and writer
*“A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin. ”
-- Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843), Scottish clergyman
*“Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.”
-- Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904), American lawyer and author
“I cannot breathe without the Bible. Every morning I must read a passage because I feel hungry for God's Word.”
-- Maja, a 17-year-old Macedonian high school student
“The effect of standing before God by welcoming him before us will be the transformation of our entire life.”
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 109
*“He has the most need of righteousness who least wants it.”
-- Old Puritan saying
*“Only the disciplined are free.”
-- J. C. Penney (1875-1971), American businessman and entrepreneur
“Prayer is not a preparation for work, it IS work. Prayer is not a preparation for the battle, it IS the battle. Prayer is two-fold: definite asking and definite waiting to receive.”
-- Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), British Christian writer
“I had to e-mail you because your message rings so true. I burn for influence from older, stronger Christian men--just to spend time with them...I'm desperate for another man or men to draw on. And I'm not the only one who sees it, either. The students around me are starved for influence outside the world of 18-22 year olds.”
-- Email from a male college student to a Christian leader
“The crowd says, 'Follow us and fit in.' Christ says, 'Follow me and stand out.'
-- Richard Altork, missionary
“Mature people are made not out of good times but out of bad times. Man's extremity is God's opportunity. It is in the crisis that the best in us comes to the fore.”
-- Hyman Judah Schachtel (1907-1990), rabbi and author
“People who don't care about religion don't have a clue about the degree to which faith motivates human behavior.”
-- Dr. Mark Regnerus, University of Texas Sociology professor, member of the Center for the Scientific Study of Religion
*“One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.“
-- Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 59
“I never liked the middle ground - the most boring place in the world.”
-- Louise Nevelson (1900-1988) Russian-American artist
*“I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”
-- William Carey (1761-1834), British missionary to India
“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives...and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”
-- Nate Saint (1923-56), American missionary martyr
*“In the evening I was unexpectedly visited by a considerable number of people, with whom I was enabled to converse profitably of divine things. Took pains to describe the difference between a regular and irregular self love; the one consisting with a supreme love to God, but the other not; the former uniting God's glory and the souls happiness that they become one common interest, but the latter disjoining and separating God's glory and man's happiness, seeking the larger with the neglect of the former.”
-- David Brainerd (1718-1747), American missionary
*“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office [as missionary]. People talk of the sacrifice of spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice? ... Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the souls to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”
-- David Livingstone (1813-1873), British missionary to Africa
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
-- St. Augustine (354-430), North African theologian and philosopher
“I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 ), French mathematician and scientist, in Pensées
“The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.”
-- Samuel Rutherford (1600?-1661), Scottish theologian
“And Satan trembles when he sees, the weakest saint upon his knees.
-- William Cowper (1731-1800) English poet and hymn writer
“For God to do a miracle, impossibility is needed. For God to work powerfully through someone, utter human weakness is needed.”
-- Bennie Mostert
“Before we can pray, 'Thy Kingdom come,' we must be willing to pray, 'My Kingdom go.'”
-- Alan Redpath (1907-1989), British pastor, evangelist and author
“[W]e have become people who focus on managing and minimizing risk everywhere we see it. We love the illusion of danger but not the real thing... “We want Jesus to be the same way: all reward, no risk. We don't give ourselves fully to him because we are afraid he will send us to China or ask us to become poor. We want the illusion of faith, as long as we are safe. But walking with God is not a no-risk proposition. It is one of the most dangerous things you can do... “We have a part to play in this life of risk and faith. Jesus calls us beyond our comfort level to step into obedience and watch God do great and mighty things. We say to God, ‘Show me and I'll believe’. Instead, God says to us, ‘Believe, and I'll show you’. This is the life of following Jesus Christ.”
-- Mike Erre in "The Jesus of Suburbia"
“The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives.”
-- President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), on October 24, 1914
“Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.”
-- US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures: that is character.”
-- Horace Greeley (181-1872), American newspaper editor, politician and reformer
“You can do one of two things: You can humble yourself or life will humble you. I think it’s a lot easier to find a way to humble yourself.”
-- Billy Donovan, University of Florida basketball coach, 2008
Stupid/Bad/Untruthful/Absurd:
“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.”
-- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), ACLU agnostic attorney
“Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others.”
-- Deepok Chopra, Indian doctor and popular writer
“If you don't believe in something or someone, it is impossible to believe in yourself. And believing in yourself is the best reason to live.”
-- Bucknell (PA) University student
“If I cease to believe in existence, then I will cease to exist.”
-- University of Michigan-Dearborn student
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.”
-- Arthur C. Clarke (1917- ), British sci-fi writer
“To me age doesn't not matter what so ever if it's a heterosexual or homosexual couple. A lot of people don't agree with it but I'm dating a 55-year-old women and I'm 18.”
-- Comment from “confused1” on the pro-gay Oasis Magazine online message board
“Our way is one of radical combat against depravity, and America is the original root of depravity.”
-- 1985 communiqué from Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah
“It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt... In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal... This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.”
-- Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), agnostic lawyer and politician
“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
-- Thomas Edison (1847-1931), American inventor
*“No man is happy without delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”
-- Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904), American lawyer and author
“People need a fairy tale... People need a story line that is fairly simple to understand.”
-- Ronald McKay, neurologist
“I believe people have different ways of approaching the Word. For me, it's metaphor, written by people a long time after Christ died and interpreted by specific groups. I read the gospels that aren't included in the Bible. These make me feel good about calling myself a Christian.”
-- Jane Fonda, American actress that “converted” to Christ in 1998
“Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.”
-- Gene Robinson, first gay Episcopal bishop
“A man who is right every time is not likely to do much.”
-- Dr. Francis Crick (1916-2004), British evolutionary scientist
Q: What is our purpose on Earth?
A: “I don't know. Philosophers and scientists are investigating that. And I too as a Buddhist think on it. But in daily life, sometimes such questions are not that relevant. We are here” [implying, what are we going to do about it?]
-- Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhist leader
“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British atheistic philosopher
“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion... I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think that flying planes in a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child.”
“When you look at belief in such things -- as do you go to heaven, is there a devil -- we have more in common with (Muslin countries) Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened that us.”
-- TV personality Bill Maher
The atheist worldview of life is “a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“We absolutely reject absolute truth.”
-- Ford Vox, founder of Universism (2004)
“No one person can own the copyright to what God means.”
-- Marilyn Manson, rock icon, Seventeen magazine, April, 2005, p. 108
“Love is purely a creation of the human imagination...the most important example of how the imagination continually outruns the creature it inhabits.”
-- Katherine Anne Porter (1894-1980), American journalist and writer
*“I'm not no college material. I'm never gonna get no C+ grades! I'm white trash! I'm just no good, low down, never-gonna-go-to-no-college white trash!!”
-- “Louie Lastick” in Remember the Titans
“...I really want to believe. I find the goodies offered by Christianity extremely attractive. But I am damned (again!) if I am going to sell my evolutionary birthright for a mess of religious pottage.”
-- Michael Ruse, FSU evolutionary professor, in “A Few Last Words -- Until Next Time”, Zygon (vol. 29, March, 1994, p. 79)
“Human destiny is an episode between two oblivions.”
-- Ernest Nagel (1901-1985), Czech philosopher
“My children are the most precious thing in my life. That is why I sacrificed them for a greater cause -- for Allah, who is more precious than them. My son is not more precious than his God, he is not more precious than the places holy to Islam, and he is not more precious than his homeland or his Islam.”
-- Umm Nidal, mother of suicide terrorist Muhammad Farhat and Palestinian Legislative Council member (HUMAN EVENTS, 2/13/06, Robert Spencer “Hamas' Mother of Killers,” p. 18.
“The center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth.”
-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Roman Catholic priest, in "Conjectures Of An Innocent Bystander", p. 158
“We've got God by the throat, and I'm not going to stop until one of us is dead.”
-- Dr. Jesse Bering, University of Arkansas professor
“We [Muslims] have to be above you. You [Americans] have to be subdued. No regrets. No remorse.”
-- Zacarias Moussaoui, al-Qaeda terrorist at his trial (2006)
“My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.”
-- Oprah Winfrey, talk show host in "The Fourth 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said", ed. Robert Byrne, 1990.
“The first step in faith is to stop thinking about God at the time of prayer.”
-- Brennan Manning, Catholic Franciscan and mystic author
Statements from Saudi Islamic education books after the intolerant sections were removed:
1st Grade: “Every religion other than Islam is false.”
5th Grade: “A Muslim, even if he lives far away, is your brother in religion. Someone who opposes God, even if he is your brother by family tie, is your enemy in religion.”
8th Grade: “As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.”
10th Grade: “Muslims will triumph because they are right. He who is right is always victorious, even if most people are against him.”
-- By Nina Shea, Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page B01, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901769.html
“Mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation -- and you and I are his children. If we're going to keep on growing into Christ-images for the world around us, we're going to have to give up fear.”
-- The Right Reverend Dr. Katharine Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, “Church relents to head off gay split,” Ruth Gledhill and James Bone, June 23, 2006 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19560331-2703,00.html
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
-- June 15th entry in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1929-1945), a German-born Jew who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp
“We are all snobs of the Infinite, parvenus of the Eternal.”
-- James Gibbons Huneker (1860-1921), American music author-critic
“(God is speaking) I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it? Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.”
-- Neale Donald Walsch, New Age promoter, in "Conversations with God"
“If a thing is absolutely true, how can it not also be a lie? An absolute must contain its opposite.”
-- Charlotte Painter, American writer/educator
“It's very hard to keep your spirits up. You've got to keep selling yourself a bill of goods, and some people are better at lying to themselves than others. If you face reality too much, it kills you.”
-- Woody Allen in a 2006 Washington Post interview with David Segal
“He who knows tells not; he who tells knows not.”
-- Lao Tzu, (6th Century BC), Father of Taoism
“Work sucks...school sucks...what else can I say? ... Life is a video game you've got to die sometime.”
-- Kimveer Gill (1981-2006), Dawson College student murderer on his profile on www.vampirefreaks.com
“Christianity...does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood.”
-- Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi, Iraqi cleric (Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/06, 26A)
“Yes I am [a Hindu]. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.”
-- Mohatmas Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian spiritual and national leader
“One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.”
-- Voltaire (1694-1778), French atheistic philosopher
“College is a time for excess, for experimentation. It is four fleeting years of free-spirited indulgence . . . Don't waste it. Use that finite period to live on your won terms, let go.”
-- New York Times editorial, October 6, 2006, A27
“I don't care enough to care about why I don't care.”
-- Albert, New York University student
“I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying 'this is fiction.'”
-- Sir Ian McKellen, gay British actor
“The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
-- Professor John Guillebaud, co-chair of the Optimum Population Trust (HUMAN EVENTS, 5/17/07, p. 18)
“...[C]urrent lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class -- involving high meat intake use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable. A shift is necessary. which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations...”
-- Maurice Strong , opening speech at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
“I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.”
-- Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), American poet in "Hurt Hawks"
“The biggest enemy we face is anthropocentrism. This is that common attitude that everything on this Earth was put here for [human] use.”
-- Eric Pianka (b. 1939), University of Texas-Austin biology professor
“I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I’m both an American of African descent and a woman. I’m 100 percent both. At the most basic level, I understand the two religions to be compatible. That's all I need. It wasn't about intellect. All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be… I could not not be a Muslim.”
--The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest in good standing (http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgibin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=redding17m&date=20070617&query=Redding)
“Domestic abuse is fundamentally an abuse of power, and many conceptions of God derived from the Bible and the Christian tradition have portrayed divine power in unhealthy and potentially oppressive ways … There are particular problems in the attribution of violent actions and attitudes to God, chiefly but not solely in the Old Testament, which require careful interpretation” … Biblical violence “in combination with uncritical use of masculine imagery, can validate overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behaviour”.
-- Guidelines of the Church of England Archbishops’ Council on domestic abuse (The Daily Mail, British newspaper, www.dailymail.co.uk/ pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id= 408190&in_page_id=1770 )
“These harmful beliefs include a conception of God derived from the Bible and the Christian tradition portraying divine power in ‘unhealthy and oppressive’ ways, the report said. There are particular problems in the attribution of violent actions and attitudes to God, chiefly but not solely in the Old Testament, which require "careful" interpretation, it said. “A view of our relationship with God in terms of domination and submission, along with uncritical use of masculine imagery to characterise God, can validate ‘overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behaviour’ in intimate relationships.”
-- Church of England report, "Responding to Domestic Abuse, Guidelines for Pastoral Responsibility", www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369342details/Viewing+God+as+male+'contributes+to+domestic+abuse'+says+Church/article.do
“Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.”
-- Gary Yourofsky, Animal Liberation Front leader and activist, in “Empathy, Education and Violence: A Time for Everything” (1997, 2005)
“We are killing our host the planet Earth…. I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement…. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”
-- Paul Watson (b. 1950), GreenPeace co-founder and founder/president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070506180903.aspx
“It was once written, ‘No man can serve two masters. He will either love the one and hate the other, or he will hate the one and love the other.’ And so the world of polarization continued a little while longer. But nowhere in that passage did it say that two masters [Darkness and Light] could not serve the one man.”
-- “Channeled by Daniel Jacob” on a neo-shaman website
“[A]rguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: [God is] jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
-- Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), British ethologist and evolutionary biologist of Oxford University in "The God Delusion"
“My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.”
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick, liberal Baptist minister in “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Christian Work 102 (June 10, 1922): 716–722, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5070/.
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline, the sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”
-- Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-American novelist and philosopher in "The Fountainhead"
“A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination. …”
-- The University of Delaware's Office of Residence Life Diversity Education Training document (later withdrawn), http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000005816.cfm
“A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures — an that is the basis of all human morality.”
-- President John Kennedy (1917-1963)
“Projectile vomiting is our birthright.”
-- Statement on “Comment is Free” forum of Britain’s Guardian Unlimited web site about binge drinking parties in Britain during the 2 weeks leading up to Christmas (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12/25/07, 25A)
“The pope has exhorted to open wide the doors to Christ: Christ lives in Muslims too.”
-- Don Aldo Danieli, parish pastor of Our Lady of Assumption of Ponzano near Venice, Italy (“A Catholic Church Turns Into A Mosque,” Fr. Chetan, Capuchin, Rome, Published 11/1107), http://mangalorean.com/browsearticles.php?arttype=Feature&articleid=1149
“I don’t profess any religion; I don’t think it’s possible that there is a God…. My books are about killing God.”
-- Philip Pullman, British author of His Dark Materials trilogy, in an interview with "The Sydney Morning Herald" (2003), reprinted in The American Christian College Journal (12/07, p. 8)
“Facts and the truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”
-- William Faulker (1897-1962), American novelist and poet
“Christ was the first feminist and because of that I've learned from his teaching to call myself a Christian feminist,” adding that her faith is “not a matter of traditions and dogmas but, rather, a spiritual experience.”
-- Jane Fonda, Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2008, page W11
“When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
-- Ingrid Newkirk (b. 6/11/49), British-born animal rights activist and founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
“I want to offer the possibility that Jesus was truly, as he proclaimed, a savior. Not the savior, not the one and only Son of God. Rather Jesus embodied the highest level of enlightenment.”
-- Deepak Chopra, “The Third Jesus,” 2/21/08 www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1918295720080221?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true
“White people are potential humans ... they haven't evolved yet.”
-- Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam leader, (b. 1933), "The Philadelphia Inquirer", March 19, 2000
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the – if he – if ‘is’ means is and never has been that is not – that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”
-- Then President Bill Clinton's Grand Jury Testimony, August 17, 1998
“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president ... and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”
-- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago), in a sermon delivered at the Howard University chapel on Jan. 15, 2006 (www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25560)
“It’s all been done before…and not just by powerful “risk-taking” alpha men…. It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature…”
-- Natalie Angier “In Most Species, Faithfulness Is a Fantasy”, The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/science/18angi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics.”
-- Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (copyright 2008, AFP, 3/4/08) http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080304120710.ad7gm7i6&show_article=1
“Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.”
-- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
“Two thousand years ago, God started a revolt against the religion He started. So don't ever put it past God to cause a groundswell movement against churches and Christian institutions that bear His name.”
-- Erwin McManus (b. 1958), Mosaic Church pastor in "The Barbarian Way"
Truth/Lies:
“Tolerance is a virtue...if nothing is true.”
-- Bill Perry, international student missionary and pastor
“I finally realized that until you understand why you do things, you have no control over what you do.”
-- Jamila Wideman, WNBA star
“The masses will more likely believe a big lie than a small one.”
-- Adolph Hitler (1889-1945), German Nazi leader of WW 2
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
-- Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), Russian communist dictator
“The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.”
-- Herbert Agar (1897-1980), American historian and writer
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
-- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British humanist writer
“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
-- Mark Twain (1857-1938), American writer
“People inherently yearn for truth. We all want to know, what happens when we die? Does God care? Up to now, the answers have been given us by people from thousands of years ago, but that can only take you so far. All concepts of God are limiting.”
-- Deepak Chopra, MD, Indian doctor and popular author
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.”
-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister
“Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.”
-- William Penn (1648-1718), English explorer and Quaker leader
“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.”
-- Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), American agnostic orator
*“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.”
-- John Locke (1632-1704), British political philosopher
“I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”
-- Dan Rather, former CBS news anchor
“War is deceit.”
-- Mohammed (571-632), Prophet of Islam
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister
“Follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
-- Antony Flew, British philosophy professor who renounced his life's work in atheism and accepted theism at age 81.
“Printers are educated in the belief that, when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public, and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an over match for the latter.”
-- Benjamin Franklin, founding father, in Apology for Printers, 1731
“If you re not speaking your own truth, you will never be able to be all you are meant to be. You cannot be pretending to be somebody else.”
-- Oprah Winfrey, TV personality, 4/30/05, in Denver
“It makes you feel like you're losing your mind in a way. You imagine things. When you don't know the truth, certain details can be blown out of proportion. The truth may be painful, but it's the truth. You start to contrive all these scenarios that could have taken place because they [Pentagon leaders] just kept lying. If you feel you're being lied to, you can never put it to rest.”
-- Mary Tillman, mother of former NFL star and Army specialist Pat Tillman killed in Afghanistan 4/22/04 when seeking the full story of her son's death (Sun-Sentinel, A-3, 5/23/05)
“I loathe careerism and the herd mentality. I really think that objective truth can be discovered and that popular opinion and consensus thinking does more to obscure than to reveal.”
-- Richard Sternberg, evolutionist and former publisher of Smithsonian Institution journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (in 2005)
“(God is speaking) I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it? Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.”
-- Neale Donald Walsch, New Age promoter, in Conversations with God
“A truth that’s told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent.”
-- William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, painter and visionary
“By beginning with the up-front assumption that nothing is generally true, the thoroughgoing relativist is essentially starting the conversation by saying, ‘I have nothing to say which is necessarily true; it’s your option to regard what I say as either true or false, and in either case you would be right’.”
-- Christiopher C. Shubert, “Challenging Relativism,” The Schwartz Report (Volume 46, Numbr 6, p. 2)
“Facts and the truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”
-- William Faulker (1897-1962), American novelist and poet
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”
-- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), Prussian and German statesman
“Everything that deceives can be said to enchant.”
-- Plato (424/423-347 BC), classical Greek philosopher
“Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.”
-- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
Utopian Ideas:
“If one hopes, as I do, that within fifty years...the children now in school may live to see the day when the present arguments for world government may not be entirely fantastic.”
-- James Bryant Conant (1893-1978), Harvard University president
“Sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society -- in the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word... [it has] its own mysteries -- this is my birth [control] pill; swallow it in remembrance of me!”
-- Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British philosopher and writer
“Mankind, the Christ retried -- Recrowned, recrucified;
No god for a gift, God gave us. Mankind alone must save us...”
-- 1908 Harvard University class poem
The atheist worldview of life is “a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.”
-- Howard Thompson, President, American Atheists
“[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams -- dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society -- in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.”
-- Richard Rorty, "Achieving our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America" (1999), Stanford University's Professor of Comparative Literature, a postmodern protagonist.
“In practice, communism is nothing less than sheer barbarism that makes even the horrors of Nazism pale in comparison. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii outlines that barbarism in his book Death by Government, a comprehensive detailing of the roughly 170 million people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century. From 1917 to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union murdered about 62 million of its own people. During Mao Zedong’s reign, 35,236,000, possibly more, Chinese citizens were murdered. By comparison, Hitler’s Nazis managed to murder 21 million of its citizens and citizens in nations they conquered. Adding these numbers to the 60 million lives lost in war makes the 20th Century mankind’s most brutal era…. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That’s why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.”
-- Walter Williams, The [Colorado Springs] Gazette, 8/16/06, p. M6 (reprinted in The American Christian College Journal, 11/06, p. 6)
Youth/Generations:
*“The world is passing through troublesome times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything and what passes as wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are foolish and immodest, and unwomanly in speech, behavior and dress.”
-- Peter the Monk, 1274 AD in the Church of Scotland Journal.
*“We're like our parents' generation, in my opinion. We're getting married, having kids, settling down, buying houses.... I think we're like a lot of other generations that approach middle age.”
-- Tim Nekritz, Gen Xer
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”
-- Will Durant (1885-1981), American historian
“We see an enormous interest in the world and God's purposes in the world in young people. They have something to offer. And, I don't believe that our old paradigm for missions is sufficient for what it is that God wants to do among his people.”
-- Jim Tebbe, InterVarsity VP & Director of Mission
“I too have had my dreams: ay, [and have] known indeed the crowded visions of a fiery youth which haunt me still.”
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), British poet and playwright
“I had to e-mail you because your message rings so true. I burn for influence from older, stronger Christian men -- just to spend time with them.... I'm desperate for another man or men to draw on. And I'm not the only one who sees it, either. The students around me are starved for influence outside the world of 18-22 year olds.”
-- Email from a male college student to a Christian leader
*“Young men and women are being enticed to think of themselves as two selves, one that is mind and reason in the classroom and another self, 'after hours,' that is all body and passion. They begin to imagine-though few entirely believe it-that they can use (that is, abuse) their bodies as they please for pleasure, and that choosing to do so has nothing to do with their academic studies or future lives. In reality they are following a formula for self-disintegration and failure.”
-- Vigen Guorian, Loyola University professor
*“Adults have their own issues and their own problems, which are understandable, and some adults are working through their own adolescent issues.”
-- Christian Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill sociology professor
“Never before in our country's history has a generation been so empowered, so wealthy, so privileged -- and yet so empty.”
-- Ben Shapiro (b. 1984), Harvard Law School student and author of "Porn Generation"
“The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come. The strongest and the rarest.”
-- Milovan Djilas (1911-1995), Yugoslav communist author-politician
“Each new generation born is, in effect, an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
-- Thomas Sowell, American author in "A Conflict of Visions"
“Youth is a period of idealism. The Communists attract young people by appealing directly to that idealism. Too often, others have failed either to appeal to it or to use it and they are the losers as a consequence. We have no cause to complain if, having neglected the idealism of youth, we see others come along, take it, and harness it to their cause — and against our own.”
-- Douglas Hyde (d. 1996), former editor of the Communist newspaper "Daily Worker" (London), who converted to Catholicism in 1966, in "Dedication and Leadership", p. 17
“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the Future!”
-- Adolf Hitler, (1889-1945), German Nazi leader during WW2 speaking at the Reichsparteitag in 1935
“After the age of 80, everything reminds you of something else.”
-- Lowell Thomas (1892-1981), American author and broadcaster
