"Don't criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes; that way when you criticize him you're a mile away and have his shoes."

-- Unknown

"I was raised in the Hebrew persuasion, but I converted to Narcissism."

-- Woody Allen, Scoop

"It is wrong to suppose that for Paul faith is a meritorious act on man's part, which wins salvation, or even, in a more modern way of speech, a creative moral principle in itself. 

Paul does not, in fact, speak (when he is using the language strictly) of "justification by faith," but of "justification by grace through faith," or "on the grounds of faith." This is not mere verbal subtlety. It means that the "righteousness of God" becomes ours, not by the assertion of the individual will as such, but by the willingness to let God work."
  
-- C. Harold Dodd

"If only we could agree that Scripture is 'God's Word written', that it is supreme in its authority over all human traditions however venerable, and that it must be allowed to reform and renew the church, we would take an immediate leap forward in ecumenical relationships. Reformation according to the Word of God is indispensable to reunion."

-- John R.W. Stott, "The Contemporary Christian"

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V."

-- V's introduction to Evey

"The self-sins... dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins--egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion--are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders, even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with the gospel.

I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appear these days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of the Church visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice."

-- A. W. Tozer

"Loyalty to your country always; Loyalty to your government when it deserves it."

-- Mark Twain

"We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it."

-- Jerry Garcia

"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

-- Oliver Cromwell, to the so-called Rump Parliament in 1653.

"A more-self-contained, energetic, sincere artist I never saw. His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but who does not make it any more enjoyable either for himself or others by his attitude."

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), speaking of Ludwig van Beethoven

"If you are on the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction."

- - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"It is a poor sort of faith that imagines Christ defeated by anything men can do."

-- Joy Davidman

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

-- Anne Lamott

"What are these churches now if they are not
the tombs and sepulchres of God?"

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Faith is the human attitude of receptivity which takes what God, in his grace, holds out."

-- Ralph Martin

“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

-- George Bernard Shaw

"Many would be cowards if they had courage enough."

-- Thomas Fuller
English clergyman & historian (1608 - 1661)

"The church wants so much to be the Chaplain of American Culture that they are willing to bless anything that the American Culture decrees as good."

-- David Roseberry

"But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative: he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ.

But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace if we were to suppose that here was no need to take the first-step, because faith was already there.

Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

-- Moshe Dyan

"The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God."

-- Meister Eckhart

"Quando omni flunkus moritati"
(if all else fails, play dead)

-- anonymous...and doubtful.

"Force is always, and everywhere, a sign of fear--that is, a sign of weakness. Behind the vast armies and navies which we call the great powers of the world, there is fear. Fear it is that drives us out to war. Fear is the father of ferocity, and the forger of the sword. From the Creative point of view, which is God's point of view, force is weakness, and only Love is power."

-- G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929),
The Wicket Gate [1923]

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."

-- Edward Abbey

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

--Edward R. Murrow

"We usually think of the preacher and worship leaders as performers and the congregation as the audience. That’s a misnomer. In fact, the preacher, worship leaders and each person in the congregation are performers. God is the audience."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

When the Bible speaks of "following Jesus," it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogma, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we can ignore the seriousness of His command? Far from it! We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when His command, His call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety.

Only the man who follows the command of Jesus without reserve, and submits unresistingly to His yoke, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard--unutterably hard--for those who try to resist it.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

"Everything preaches."

-- Martin Luther

"The excellent is new forever."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A word to the wise ain't necessary. It's the stupid ones who need the advice"

-- Bill Cosby

"But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative:
he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first
step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ.

But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace
if we were to suppose that here was no need to take the first-step,
because faith was already there.

Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience
must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys,
a man cannot believe."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The only people who can understand the importance of Evangelism are those who have been evangelized themselves. They have a before and an after, and they know the difference. They also know who caused the difference."

-- P. Michael Summer

“It’s impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.”

--Upton Sinclair

"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."

("Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.")

-- Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

-- George Orwell

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

- - Oscar Wilde

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

-- Jaroslav Pelikan

"Ecce homo."

-- Pontius Pilate

“Remember this: Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”

-- William Sloane Coffin

"From my rotting body flowers shall grow, and I am in them and that is eternity."

-- Edvard Munch

"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

-- John 20:14

"You are going to face death some day. You are going to face that last moment, barring Christ's return, where you are going to be terrified of sin, death, and the devil. And at that point you are either going to say, 'I have lived the victorious life' or you are going to say, 'Dearest Jesus, forgive me! I am a beggar and a sinner!' I would say you either say the latter, or you will not spend eternity with Him in heaven."

--Pastor Matt Harrison, LCMS World Relief

"In the hospitality of war, we left them their dead as a gift to remember us by."

-- Archilochos, 7th Century BC

"Every Christian without exception is a believer, a lover and a hoper (not necessarily an optimist, since 'optimism' is a matter of temperament, 'hope' of theology). Faith, hope and love are thus sure evidences of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Together they completely reorientate our lives, as we find ourselves being drawn up towards God in faith, out towards others in love and on towards the parousia in hope. The new birth means little or nothing if it does not pull us out of our fallen introversion and redirect us towards God, Christ and our fellow human beings."

-- John R. W. Stott

"Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good."

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto."

-- Klaatu

"Christianity is over in the West because wealth kills Christianity. The West is wealth."

-- Stanley Hauerwas

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

-- Paul of Tarsus, Apostle to the Greeks

"If you are on the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We may look into a church, almost any church, and discover someone who, though he is offered a gospel of love, must subtly convert it into a gospel of hate before he can receive it. The gospel of love--with its emphasis upon brotherhood, equality before God, the dignity of every human being, and man's social responsibility toward man--does not satisfy the lack that he urgently feels. That calls for something altogether different, for an assurance that he is superior, that he is right where others are wrong--a kind of cosmic teacher's pet."

-- Bonaro W. Overstreet

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left."

-- Oscar Levant

"I'm all for keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Lets start with Typewriters!"

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

-- Albert Einstein

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week."

-- Harry Whittington (upon his release from the hospital after being accidentally shot by Vice President Dick Cheney)

"This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law."

-- Senator Russ Feingold (speaking about the NSA's wire-tapping of American citizens without Court approval)

"I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs."

-- H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

"God does not lead His children around hardship, but leads them straight through hardship. But He leads! And amidst the hardship, He is nearer to them than ever before."

-- Otto Dibelius (1880-1967)

"If the true revelation of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a revelation, but the History of a Revelation. This is not only a Fact but a necessity, for a Person cannot be revealed in a Book, but must find revelation, if at all, in a Person."

-- Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), The Law of Growth [1902]

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."

-- Albert Schweitzer

"Thats the spirit, George... If nothing else works, then a total pig headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through!"

--General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett