"Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel."

-- H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), The Kingdom of God in America [1959]

"I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand."

-- Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109

"We can not have all things to please us,
no matter how we try.
Until we've all gone to Jesus,
we can only wonder why."

-- Gillian Welch

"I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches."

-- John Wesley

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."

-- Bill Vaughn

"I love Wikipedia … any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight."

-- Stephen Colbert

"Let all our chapels be built plain and decent; but not more expensively than is absolutely unavoidable: otherwise the necessity of raising money will make rich men necessary to us. But if so, we must be dependent upon them, yea, and governed by them. And then farewell to the Methodist-discipline, if not doctrine too."

-- John Wesley, from his instructions to American Methodist churches.

"And certain tiny primates could theoretically become airborne, possibly self-propelled, and maneuver their escape from lower-back regions of one's physical body. (See The Wizard of Oz)"

-- Chip

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing.”

-- Nancy Astor, British politician (1879 - 1964)

"Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; ... Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; ... Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” does not say “Greed is good”; James Cagney never says “You dirty rat” in any of his films; ..."

-- Louis Menard

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

-- Edward R. Murrow

"Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does."

-- Bill Nye

"One of the reasons the Reformation was such an urgent, bloody affair, was that those involved had to get things right with God before he came on his final tour of inspection in the Last Days."

-- Diarmaid MacCulloch

"It is astounding what God allows the human race to get away with, when lightning is so cheap."

-- Mark Twain

"The ‘wiles of the devil’ take many forms, but he is at his wiliest when he succeeds in persuading people that he does not exist. To deny his reality is to expose ourselves the more to his subtlety."

-- John R.W. Stott

"Sin is not what we do. Sin is who we are."

-- Nelson W. Koscheski

"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men."

-- Max Beerbohm

"Not all chemicals are bad. Without hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."

-- Dave Barry

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it."

-- Stephen Leacock

"Da man! You iz da man! Do you hear me?! You da man!! How much $$ coming tomorrow? Did we get some more $$ in??"

-- Jack Abramoff, e-mail