Peter Kreeft Quotes

Abortion is the Antichrist's demonic parody of the eucharist. That's why it uses the same holy words, "This is my body," with the blasphemous opposite meaning.

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.

I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers make, and all the people those...prayers were destined to affect...we would be so paralyzed with awe...that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.

We do not do good works to get into heaven; we do good works because heaven has gotten to us.

On my door is a cartoon of two turtles. One says, 'Sometimes I would like to ask why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it.' The other turtle says 'I am afraid that God might ask me the same question.'

The secret of joy is hidden in the word itself: first J, then O, then Y: Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.

The national anthem of hell is, "I Did It My Way."

If you love, you will suffer. The only way to protect yourself against suffering is to protect yourself against love - and that is the greatest suffering of all, loneliness.

Trying to fill the God-sized hole in our hearts with things other than God is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles.

Our only qualitifcation for God's grace is our emptiness, not our fullness; our undeservingness, not our deservingness.

Moral stupidity comes in two different forms: relativism and legalism. Relativism sees no principles, only people; legalism sees no people, only principles.

Faith is the root, the necessary beginning. Hope is the stem, the energy that makes the plant grow. Love is the fruit, the flower, the visible product, the bottom line. The plant of our new life in Christ is one; the life of God comes into us by faith, through us by hope, and out of us by the works of love.

We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name "Jesus" means: 'God saves'.

Control language and you control thought; control thought and you control action; control action and you control the world.

The key to faith is love. We believe only if we love. Trust is the middle term; only if we love, do we trust; and only if we trust, do we believe.

No culture in history has ever embraced moral relativism and survived. Our own culture, therefore, will either (1) be the first, and disprove history's clearest lesson, or (2) persist in its relativism and die, or (3) repent of its relativism and live. There is no other option.

Gratitude is the seedbed of joy.

A saint isn't somebody who tries harder, but someone who trusts more.

Original sin is the proclivity to say "my will be done" instead of "thy will be done."

Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.

Faith is not like bottled water but like rain. Its destiny is not just to be kept and held but to make something visible grow.

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.

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

The block of marble is not the sculptor, and doesn't see that he's about to become a masterpiece... We're the block of marble and God is the sculptor, and the chisel is.... everything.

There are also two Christianities in the world today. There is (1) the Christianity of the New Testament, and there is (2) the Christianity of accommodation to modernism, egalitarianism, niceness, naturalism, pop psychology, secular humanism, relativism, subjectivism, individualism, "Enlightenment" rationalism or postmodern irrationalism. New converts to the first Christianity are constantly amazed and scandalized by finding many of their clergy to be in love with the second and in fear of the first.