Quotes

FAITH

"Only in a world where faith is difficult, can faith exist."
Peter Kreeft

"When a train goes through a tunnel & it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket & jump off. You sit still & trust the engineer."
Corrie ten Boom

"Mary summarized all the practical wisdom in the world in one sentence when she said to the waiters at Cana, "Do whatever He tells you."
Peter Kreeft

"There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."
Blaise Pascal

"The warfare we are in is against unbelief, not unbelievers - just as insulin is against diabetes, not diabetics."
Peter Kreeft

"Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith, just as indifference, not hate, is the strongest enemy of love."
Peter Kreeft

REASON

"Reason is one way of finding truth. It is a distinctively human way; animals can't do it. We can. So let's begin."
Peter Kreeft

"We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well."
Peter Kreeft

"Reason, reasoning, arguing, dialect, logic, dialogue, conversation - all seven of these English words are translations of the Greek 'logos.'"
Peter Kreeft

"When you are edging closer and closer to the abyss, the most progressive direction is backwards."
Peter Kreeft

MORAL RELATIVISM

"People love truth when it shines warmly on them, and hate it when it rebukes them."
St. Augustine

"Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane - but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants."
Peter Kreeft

"God doesn't change His mind to conform to opinion polls - we did not elect Him to be God, and we cannot vote Him out of the office."
Peter Kreeft

"If you believe what you like in the gospels and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe but yourself."
St. Augustine

"Spanish Inquisition wrongly destroyed heretics so as to rightly destroy heresies. Today, some wrongly love heresies so as to rightly love heretics."
Peter Kreeft

"The Church has always had a conservative head & a liberal heart, and the world has never understood her, just as it never understood Christ."
Peter Kreeft

"It makes sense for God to make just one road. He starts from unity, from the top of the mountain. We start from diversity, from the bottom."
Peter Kreeft

"Grey is the devil's favorite color."
Peter Kreeft

"There are only two kinds of people: sinners, who think they're saints; and saints, who know they're sinners."
Peter Kreeft

"Saints live in reality. Despite what the Supreme Court says, it is the Supreme Being, not the Supreme Court, who invents and defines reality."
Peter Kreeft

"The national anthem of Hell is 'I did it my way."
Peter Kreeft

HOPE

"No human relationship is hopeless because no human being is hopeless."
Peter Kreeft

LOVE

"Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home."
Mother Teresa

"Kindness - mere kindness - cannot tolerate suffering. Love can."
Peter Kreeft

"No one heals himself by wounding another."
St. Ambrose

"The most precious gift in the world given without love is worthless; the cheapest gift in the world given with love is priceless."
Peter Kreeft

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."
Mother Teresa

"Apologetics is important. Yet all of the arguments ever written in apologetics are worth less in the eyes of God than a single act of love."
Peter Kreeft

"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky

"Learn to relax and enjoy God. If you do you'll learn that God isn't a boss, but a Father; and that we are not His worker bees, but His kids."
Peter Kreeft

What do you love? "The things that we love tell us what we are."
St. Thomas Aquinas

"God is love. Wrath is how His love appears to us when we sin or rebel or run away from Him. The very light that is meant to help us appears to us as our enemy when we seek the darkness."

Peter Kreeft

FORGIVENESS

"Love has enemies -- and forgiveness destroys all those enemies."
Peter Kreeft

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered - forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives - be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you - be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous - be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow - do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough - give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God- it was never between you and them anyway."
Mother Teresa

"Justice cannot defeat evil. Neither can courage, nor even heroism. Mercy alone can defeat evil."
Peter Kreeft

CHARITY

"It is false charity to love falsehood. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, "The greatest charity one can do to another is to lead him to the truth."
Peter Kreeft

SUFFERING

I found that in the course of life the only thing that finally teaches you anything is suffering.
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist

"The greatest Christians in history said sufferings brought them closest to God - so this is the best thing that could happen, not the worst."
Peter Kreeft

"God doesn't like it when His kids suffer. But He has to let us suffer, because we'd forget him if we didn't - and then we'd suffer more."
Peter Kreeft

PRIDE

"If you want to attack your other sins, start with attacking your pride."
Peter Kreeft

CHURCH/RELIGION

"Instead of being just a Church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a Church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent".
Pope Francis

"Yes, organized religion is a crutch. You mean you didn't know that you're a cripple? Then you are a very serious cripple indeed."
Peter Kreeft"

Every Christian has the vocation of Mary, to bring Christ to birth. We each do this in our own way and style, according to the exigencies of our unique vocation. But we do this, the same way Mary did: by abandoning our projects and plans, our sense of the good life, and acquiescing to God's purpose working through us.
Meister Eckhart, German theologian and mystic

Other religions are stories of man's search for God. The Bible is the story of God's search for man."
Peter Kreeft

BIBLE

"When you read the Bible, beware: it will do things to you. For when you read it, it is reading you. Its Author is reading you, from within."
Peter Kreeft

"Paradise, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained are the three acts of the cosmic human drama, and we are now in the third act."
Peter Kreeft

"Startling as it may seem, before the Jews, no other people ever had creation stories in the true sense of the word, only formation stories."
Peter Kreeft

"The favorite Bible verse of lazy students is: 'Of making of many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.:-)"
Peter Kreeft

PRAYER

"Less-than-perfect prayer is infinitely better than no prayer. How you do it is less important than just doing it."
Peter Kreeft