R.J. Rushdoony

“The Bible is God's law-word which must govern every sphere of life and thought.”

“The triune God exercises total government over all things, and He requires us as His image-bearers to exercise government in Christ in our own spheres in terms of His law.”

“Before the rise of Deism, Calvin condemned the pragmatic deism which relegated God to heaven and left the government of the world to men.”

“History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.”

“It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man.”

“People do not avoid the Bible because it is difficult to understand as much as because what they understand condemns their conscience and throws light on dark corners in their lives which they prefer to keep dark.”

“Law is good, proper, and essential in its place, but law can save no man, nor can law remake man and society.”

“Humanism believes in salvation by works of law. By vast appropriations of money, and dedicated labor, [it] is trying to save all nations and races, all men from all problems, in the hopes of creating paradise on earth. [It] is trying to bring peace on earth and goodwill among men by acts of state and works of law, not by Jesus Christ.”

“Our basic problem today is that we have two religions in conflict, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality.”

“Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For Humanism, salvation is an act of the state.”

“Our increasingly humanistic laws, courts and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us, as they strike down laws resting upon biblical foundations, that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality, but salvation by law.”

“We may disagree with the morality of a law, but we cannot deny the moral concern of a law.”

“For Dewey, the Great Community was the basic fact of history. The individual and the soul were invalid concepts, man was truly man, not as an individual, but as after Aristotle, in society and supremely in the State. Thus, for Dewey, true education mean not the development of the individual in terms of learning, but his socialization. Progressive education... educates the individual in terms of particular facts of the universe without reference to God, truth, or morality.”

“All too many churchmen view the undisciplined & amoral products of statist education as evidences of the failure of these schools. On the contrary, they are evidences of their success.”

“To control the future requires the control of education and of the child. Hence, for Christians to tolerate statist education, or to allow their children to be trained thereby, means to renounce power in society, to renounce their children, and to deny Christ's Lordship over all of life.”

“It is significant that, as innocent babies are killed, and capital punishment is withheld from their murderers, the same men who plead for the murderer's life also demand the “right” to abortion. Usually, the same picketers that carry a sign one day, “Abolish Capital Punishment,” also carry “Legalize Abortion” another day. When this is called to their attention, their answer is, “There is no contradiction involved.” They are right: the thesis is “condemn the innocent and free the guilty.”

“It must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society.”

“Man lives in time but his life transcends time.”