Peter Kreeft

“If one Egyptian tailor hadn’t cheated on the threads of Joseph’s mantle, Potiphar’s wife would never have been able to tear it, present it as evidence to Potiphar that Joseph attacked her, gotten him thrown in prison, and let him be in a position to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, win his confidence, advise him to store seven years of grain, and save his family, the seventy original Jews from whom Jesus came. We owe our salvation to a cheap Egyptian tailor.”

“An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth.”

“don’t confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic.”

“Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.Bertha: What's that?Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they?Bertha: In the philosophy department.Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.Socrates: Are they dangerous?Bertha: Of course not.Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.”

“The medievals loved to say that God wrote two books: nature and Scripture. And since he is the author of both books, and since this Teacher never contradicts himself, these two books never contradict each other. And since this God who never contradicts himself also gave us the two truth detectors, faith and reason, it follows that faith and reason, properly used, never contradict each other. Therefore, all heresies are contrary to reason. Not all the truths of faith can be proved by reason, but all arguments against the truths of faith can be disproved by reason.”

“The Church has always had a conservative head and a liberal heart, and the world has never understood her, just as it never understood Christ.”

“Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.”

“Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.”

“I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.”

“It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Prayer is not only conversation, it is transformation. It is not only light, it is fire. And the closer you get to Him, the hotter the fire gets. Words begin to melt. The first word that melts in His presence is the word 'I.' That is His unique name. The closer you get to Him, the harder it is to begin a sentence with 'I.' It melts in the fire of 'thou.”

“Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.”

“Pilate's skeptical sneer "What is truth?" was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world's stupidest question was three words; God's profoundest answer was one Word.”

“When I say "The good man gave his good dog a good meal," I use "good" analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good dog, and a good meal. All three are desirable, but a good man is wise and moral, a good dog is tame and affectionate, and a good meal is tasty and nourishing. But a good man is not tasty and nourishing, except to a cannibal; a good dog is not wise and moral, except in cartoons, and a good meal is not tame and affectionate, unless it's alive as you eat it.”

“This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.”

“If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.”

“It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.”

“It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.”

“Love gives you eyes.”

“The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.”

“Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love.”

“Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.”

“Man's soul has three powers, and God left him prophets for all three: Jewish moralists for his will, Greek philosophers for his mind, and pagan mythmakers for his heart and imagination and feelings. Of course, the latter two are not infallible.”

“It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.”

“We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road.”

“From the premise that Christianity is true it follows that the far-off glimpse of joy produced by fantasy is a glimpse of truth; that a great eucatastrophic tale like The Lord of the Rings is a gift of divine grace, an opening of the curtain that veils Heaven to earthly eyes, a tiny telepathic contact with the Mind of God.”

“The eye of the poet sees less clearly, but sees farther than the eye of the scientist.”

“The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God's truth, hated and fled from in vain by those who love darkness.”

“Great stories give us the grace of a mystical experience, on the level of the imagination.”

“The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.”

“We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.”

“The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man's head because she turns his heart.”

“Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.”

“God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.”

“By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.”

“Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.”

“It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.”

“Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.”

“The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.”

“Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.”

“Only because a bird doesn't swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time.”

“If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.”

“Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.”

“Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.”

“An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say.”

“Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.”

“One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.”

“We can't believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can't love what we believe to be unreal.”

“We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.”

“The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. He [C.S. Lewis] says elsewhere that that's the very definition of humility. Humility does not mean to have a low view of your self. It means to have no view of yourself. Having a low view of yourself is miserable--psychologists know that. And that's also the solution to the problem of introspection. If I ask myself, how am I doing, I come out with one of three answers: well, terribly, or so-so.If I say I'm doing well, I'm a proud, self-righteous, arrogant, self-satisfied, priggish Pharisee; if I say I'm doing lousy, I'm a miserable worm with a guilt complex and I need some psychiatry; and if i say I'm sort of fair to midland then I'm dull, wishy-washy, Charlie Brown. So what's the solution? Don't look at yourself. Take your temperature when you're sick, otherwise look at other people and God. They're much more interesting. The first step is to try to forget about yourself altogether. Your real self, your new self, will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come only when you're looking for Him.”