Here are some of my favorite quotes from various sources. You can see other quotes organized by category by clicking in the sidebar.
It is a sin to be good if God has called us to be great.
-Thom Rainer, Breakout Churches
No one shall be forgotten who was great in this world; but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved. For he who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all.
-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
For my own part I don't lack the courage to think a thought whole. No thought has frightened me so far. Should I ever come across one I hope I will at least have the honesty to say: "This thought scares me, it stirs up something else in me so that I don't want to think it."
-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Let us not go too far; let us not make a previous age's error an excuse for new error.
-Soren Kierkegaard, For Self Examination
There are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligent design.
-William Dembski, The Design Revolution
It seems ridiculous to convinced Darwinists like him that the fault might lie with their theory and that the public might be picking up on faults inherent in their theory. And yet that is exactly what is happening.
-William Dembski, The Design Revolution
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reaction to pietism was unquestionably rooted in the personal. As a Prussian and an aristocrat, he did not believe in talking his faith to death. He abhorred the shameless religious cliches and the quick and easy manner of reporting conversion experiences.
-Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds
By denying the distinction between clergy and laity, populism refused to defer to theology or theological training... Above all, populism rejected leadership and put a boundless trust in the common person. The result was a populist style of interpretation in which the right to personal judgment became "the Magna Carta of the common man." Under the rallying cry "No creed but the Bible," each man or woman became his or her own interpreter... This old theme has not faded away. It can be heard, for instance, in the megachurch dismissal of seminary training for pastors.
-Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds
The ability to read is widespread, but the inability to read any but the shallowest texts is equally widespread. Recent estimates put the literacy of more than half the population of the United States at the level of twelve-year-olds. Such semi- or sub-literacy is not being eradicated by mass-schooling: it is being made politically and psychologically acceptable.
-Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds
The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth.
-Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There
I want to suggest that scientific proof, philosophical proof, and religious proof follow the same rules.
-Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There
The Christian is not rationalistic; he does not try to begin from himself autonomously and work out a system from there on. But he is rational: he thinks and acts on the basis that A is A and A is not non-A.
-Francis Schaeffer, The Gos Who Is There
"We learn from the study of history," Hegel wrote, "how mankind has learned nothing form the study of history." "Man's real treasure," wrote Jose Ortega y Gasset, "is the treasure of his mistakes, piled up stone by stone throughout thousands of years."
-Os Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness
But put simply, as historian Arnold Toynbee has said, someone trying to understand the present is like a man with his nose pressed against a mirror trying to see his whole body.
-Os Guiness, Prophetic Untimeliness
"If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake...clearly this must the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?"
-Aristotle
What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, "What is this?" Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek Thee, even if he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not find Thee!
-Augustine
"When a postmodernist like John Caputo intones, 'The truth is that there is no truth,' someone should have the courage to say that the emperor is running around buck-naked."
-William Lane Craig
"Individualistic democracy has come to high tide: and it is more difficult today to be an individual then it ever was before."
-T.S. Eliot
"But it is quite absurd to try for popularity (practicality) in the first inquiry, upon which depends the total correctness of the principles."
-Immanuel Kant
"That everyone may learn to read, in the long run corrupts not only writing but also thinking."
-Friedrich Nietzche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"You have served the people and the superstition of the people, all you famous wise men - and not truth."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamours thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn't turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and tries to redirect it appropriately."
-Plato
"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize...cities will have no rest from evils, Glaucon, nor, I think, will the human race."
-Plato