Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something.
~ Dorothy Sayers

I want God, not my idea of God.
~ C.S. Lewis

When I fail as a critic I may yet be useful as a specimen.
~ C.S. Lewis

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
~ Albert Einstein

The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing.
~ A.W. Tozer

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit.
~ Pascal

The righteous man is the one who lives for the next generation.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is the heart that is not yet sure of its god that is afraid to laugh in His presence.
~ George MacDonald

We have very efficiently pared the claws of the lion of Judah, certified him meek and mild, and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.
~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Marilyn [Monroe] once was asked if she believed in God. With a flirtatious grin she said, “I just believe in everything—a little bit.” This “Monroe doctrine” might be the defining doctrine of postmodern times.
~ Philip Graham Ryken, in Is Jesus The Only Way?, page 15

Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
~ Leo Tolstoy, in The Kingdom of God is Within You

Once more into the breach, dear friends,
Once more; …
~ William Shakespeare, in King Henry V

I was too weak to defend, so I attacked.
~ Robert E. Lee

Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
~ Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf

We are so outnumbered there’s only one thing to do. We must attack.
~ Andrew Browne Cunningham, before attacking the Italian fleet at Taranto on November 11, 1940

Impetuosity and audacity often achieve what ordinary means fail to achieve.
~ Nicholi Machiavelli, in Discourses

Arm me, audacity, from head to foot.
~ William Shakespeare, in Cymbeline

De l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace! [Audacity, audacity again, and audacity always.]
~ Georges Danton, to the French Legislative Assembly on September 2, 1792

In audacity and obstinacy will be found safety.
~ Napoleon I, in Maxims of War

So ends the bloody business of the day.
~ Homer, in Odyssey

I always say that next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.
~ The Duke of wellington

Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.
~ Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England—he should have said Britain, of course—always wins one battle – - the last.
~ Winston Churchill, in a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon in London, on November 10, 1942

Nothing is more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
~ Winston Churchill, in The Malakand Field Force

The purple testament of bleeding war.
~ William Shakespeare, in King Richard II

Blood is the price of victory.
~ Karl von Clausewitz, in On War

The gods favour the bold.
~ Ovid, in Metamorphoses, x

Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
~ Tacitus, in Histories

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
~ Edmund Spenser, in The Faerie Queene

Boldness be my friend!
Arm me, audacity, from heat to foot!
~ William Shakespeare, in Cymbeline

Desperate affairs, require desperate remedies
~ Horatio Nelson

Bold decisions give the best promise of success.
~ Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, in Rules of Desert Warfare

Fortes fortuna adiuvat. [Fortune favours the brave.]
~ Terence, in Phormio

Bravery never goes out of fashion.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, in The Four Georges

As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, go out and do it. As soon as you feel critical, say something kind in a kindly way. As soon as you feel neglected, send a cheerful note to a friend.
~ Oliver Wilson

We do not “make” Christ Lord; he is Lord! Those who will not receive Him as Lord are guilty of rejecting Him. “Faith” that rejects His sovereign authority is really unbelief. Conversely, acknowledging His lordship is no more a human work than repentance or faith itself. In fact, it is an important element of divinely produced saving faith, not something added to faith.
~ John MacArthur, in The Gospel According To Jesus, page 28

When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column.
~ George Bernard Shaw

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.
~ George Elliot

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
~ G. K. Chesterton

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
~ Thornton Wilder

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Little things affect little minds.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

We all of us live too much in a circle.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
~ John Ruskin

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
~ William Shakespeare

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others.
~ Thomas Jefferson

A bad man is wretched amidst every earthly advantage: a good man—troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
~ Plato

The tree most difficult things are: to keep a secret, to employ time properly, and to bear an injury.
~ Chilon

No prophet has been raised up who has not performed the work of a shepherd.
~ Mohammed

Postmodernism defies definition because we’re right in the middle of a cultural phenomenon still unfolding before us—it’s a moving target.
~ Peter Sacks, in Generation X Goes To College, page 116.

But perhaps the best candidate for postmodernity’s byword is given us by Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, the grunge rockers may observers ight contend are emblematic of Generation X culture: “Here we are now / entertain us,” says a line from “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a lyric that hits upo n the domination of entertainment values in contemporary culture, spanning politics, education, and even religious institutions. Indeed, one migh modify Nirvana’s lyric along the lines of Descartes to say, “I am entertained, therefore I am.”
~ Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 118

Generation X is not a thing; it’s the lack of a thing, the lack of a positive theory, or an opinion about anything. They don’t believe in anything, and everything is up for grabs.
~ Lloyd, quoted by Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 139

Post-modernism means the end of a single world view, and by extension, a “war on totality,” a resistance to single explanations, a respect for difference and a celebration of the regional, local and particular.
~ Charles Jencks, in The Post-Modern Reader, page 12

Sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new postmodern face. A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself. He must believe not only in sociolicial statistics but also in real people. He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his own soul; no only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not only the summary reports he receives each morning, but olso his own feelings.
~ Vaclav Havel, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in 1995

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them a the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
~ Dorothy Sayers, in The Lost Tools of Learning

Homo mensura.
~ Protagoras

All statements are false.
~ Gorgias

The unexamined life is not worth living.
~ Socrates

If there is no God, then all things are permissible.
~ Dostoevsky

To have people who are well informed but not constrained by conscience is conceivably, the most dangerous outcome of education possible. Indeed it could be argued that ignorance is better than unguided intelligence, for the most dangerous people are those who have knowledge without a moral framework.
~ Ernest Boyer, in “The Third Wave of School Reform”, Christianity Today , 9/22/89, p. 16

I am a machine condemned to devour books.
~ Karl Marx, in a letter to Engels, April 11, 1868

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.
~ Report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
~ Winston Churchill, while speaking before the House of Commons, August 20, 1940 in regard to the RAF in the Battle of Britain

The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold t to the public at an astronomical price. It’s time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year.
~ Samuel Blumenfeld, in NEA: Trojan Horse In American Education [Boise, Idaho: Paradigm, 1984] page xiv

No man is religiously neutral in his knowledge of and his appropriation of reality.
~ Henry Zylstra, in Testament of Vision, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981, page 148

The world is not composed of religious and non-religious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have different ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the living God in different ways…. All humans are incurably religious; we simply manifest different religious allegiances.
~ Ronald Nash, in The Closing of the American Heart, page 38

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except your ravish me
~ John Donne, Sonnet no. 14

But then no artist is normal; if he were, he wouldn’t be an artist. Normal men don’t creat works of art. They eat, sleep, hold down routine jobs, and die. You are hypersensitive to life and nature; that’s why you are able to interpret for the rest of us. But if you are not careful, that very hypersensitiveness will lead you to your destruction. The strain of it breaks every artist in time.
~ Irving Stone, in Lust for Life

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it, not as self-forgetfulness, but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable that he believes them to be…. The great thing is to make him value an opinon for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.
~ Screwtape talking to Wormwood, in C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters, NY: Bantam, 1982, page 41

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.”
~ C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, NY: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 1996, page 110

Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines agains service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance.
~ Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) page 130.

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking bout what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator.
~ Peggy Noonan, in Simply Speaking (NY: HarperCollins, 1998), page 8

As a performer there’s nothing better than moments where you feel that you have the option—within the given text—to do exactly as you want, where you’re not worried about what you look like or whether you’ve warmed up enough. You just seem to be involved in a pure expression which is completely appropriate.
~ Mark Morris in “Marvelous Mark Morris,” BBC Music Magazine, special issue, Ballet from Ritual to Romance (1996), page 64

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration, the mos selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
~ William Temple, in Readings in St. John’s Gospel, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1939), page 68

Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half full) of artificial admirers (like people who write generic anniversary cards for a living). Emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the disciplines of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections from God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship.”
~ John Piper, in Desiring God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986), page 76

The glory of God is the fully alive human being.
~ Irenaeus of Lyons

Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.
~ Richard Mitchell, in The Graves of Academe

Perhaps the number one problem in public education is the attempt to educate students without a moral point of reference. With a floating target of truth and the desertion of absolutes, the entire system has abandoned its base.
~ Kenneth Gangel, in Schooling Choices, edited by Wayne House (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988) page 127.

We have too readily blamed shortcomings in American education on social changes (the disorientation of the American family or the impact of television ( or incompetent teachers or structural flaws in our school systems. But the chief blame should fall on faulty theories promulgated in our schools of education and accepted by educational policymakers.
~ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.
~ Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1987), page 25

Relativism, then is a position for which the world still awaits an argument. It is also self-defeating in the sense that every self-styled relativist is forced, sooner or later, to appeal to absolutes of his own making. And it is a theory that robs life of elements needed for any life to have meaning.
~ Ronald Nash, in The Closing of the American Heart, page 67

There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable truth is also dead and buried.
~ John Dewey

If you want to predict the future of our land, go to school and look around.
~ Richard Mitchell, in The Graves of Academe

The most important Christian education institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as those institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work.
~ J. Gresham Machen, in Education, Christianity, and the State, edited by John w. Robbins (Jefferson, MD: The Trinity Foundation, 1987), page 8

I have never met a genuine Christian who disparaged the importance of conversion, faith, commitment, sacrifice, Bible study, holy living, and the like. But I know lots of Christians who have not yet seen the importance of sound doctrine. It is important THAT we believe (spiritual concern); but it is also important WHAT we believe (theological concern).
~ Ronald Nash, Closing of the American Heart, page 99

The parents must have knowledge of what has happened in the past, and prescriptions for what ought to be, in order to resist the philistinism or the wickedness of the present.
~ Allan Bloom, in Closing of the American Mind, page 57

My Lord, If I attempted to answer the mass of futile correspondence that surrounds me, I should be debarred from all serious business of campaigning. I must remind your Lordship—for the last time—that so long a I retain and independent position, I shall see that no officer under my command is debarred, by attending to the futile driveling of mere quill-driving in your Lordship’s office, from attending to his first duty—which is, and always has been, so to train the private men under his command that they may, without question, beat any force opposed to them in the field.
~ Duke of Wellington

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it.
~ Winston Churchill, to the War Cabinet, September 3, 1940

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
~ George Washington, in his Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother.
~ Joseph Stalin

Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
~ Adolph Hitler, in Mein Kampf

War without allies is bad enough—with allies it is Hell!
~ John Slessor, in Strategy for the West

Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry.
~ Oliver Cromwell, to his troops at Marston Moor on July 2, 1644

There cannot be good laws where there are not good arms.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince

When princes think more of luxury than of arms, they lose their state.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince

It is war that shapes peace, and armament that shapes war.
~ J.F.C Fuller, in Armament and History

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love for peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter but with guns.
~ Paul Joseph Goebbels, in a Berlin speech on January 17, 1936

It is customary in democratic countries to deplore expenditures on armaments as conflicting with the requirements of the social services. There is at tendency to forget that the most important social service that a government can do for its people is to keep them alive and free.
~ John Slessor, in Strategy For the West

Only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain that they will never be employed.
~ John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

The Country must have a large and efficient army, one capable of meeting the enemy abroad, or they must expect to meet him at home.
~ The Duke of Wellington, in a letter on January 28, 1811

A fish always rots from the head down.
~ Michael Dukakis

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
~ Dorothy Parker

Unkindness strikes a deeper wound than steel.
~ William Shakespeare

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
~ Thomas Carlyle

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

God created woman only to tame mankind.
~ Voltaire

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it every day, and at last we can not break it.
~ Horace Mann

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
~ Samuel Johnson

Self-trust is the first secret of success.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The same measure of gratitude which we show our parents, we may expect from our children.
~ Thales of Miletus

It is better to adorn the mind than the face.
~ Thales

The most happy man is he who is sound in health, moderate in fortune and cultivated in understanding.
~ Thales

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
~ Syrus

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
~ Syrus

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from out neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
~ Voltaire

Books rule the world, or at least those nations which have a written language; the others do not matter.
~ Voltaire

Nothing enfranchises like education.
~ Voltaire

Form your plans with deliberations, but execute them with vigor.
~ Bias of Priene

It is better to decide a difference between your enemies than your friends; for, in the former case, you will certainly gain a friend, and in the latter lose one.
~ Bias of Priene

Minds are conquered not by arms, but by greatness of soul.
~ Spinoza

To me it seems as if God conceived the world, that was poetry; he formed it, and that was sculpture; He colored it, and that was painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal drama.
~ Charlotte Cushman

The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.
~ Camillo Cavour

Let any man speak long enough, he will get believers.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The truth is always the strongest argument.
~ Sophocles

Most recently, athletes have started to endorse Jesus, as they would shoes or soda pop, and that probably helps to bring impressionable children into the fold. It’s a narcissistic kind of evangelism, though, because the athlete is usually still first in the equation.
~ Frank Deford

No one knows what he can do till he tries.
~ Syrus

Are not the pleasures of the affections greater than the pleasures of the senses, and are not the pleasures of the intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections.
~ Francis Bacon

A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
~ Francis Bacon

I had rather excel in the knowledge of what is good than in the extent of my power and dominion.
~ Alexander the Great

If thou wouldst be happy, bring thy mind to thy condition, and have an indifferency for more than what is sufficient.
~ William Penn

Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.
~ William Thackeray

He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.
~ James Allen

If you think you are beaten, you are:
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If, you like to win but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost:
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will:
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are:
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
~ Anonymous

If Christ, in fact, said, “I came not to bring peace but a sword,” it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll

__________

RELATED CONTENT

• Trivia Index
• Index to Great Quotes

__________