Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft
“Happiness can get boring, because it is the satisfaction of our desires, and we know what we desire. (Can you desire what you do not know?) Joy never gets boring because it transcends our desires and surprises them with gifts.”
“If a government is built on the principle of benevolence similar to that of a father towards his children, that is, a paternal government . . . , in which subjects are treated like children who have not yet come of age and who cannot distinguish what is truly beneficial from what is harmful for them . . . this is the greatest despotism imaginable. . . . Not a paternal but a patriotic government . . . is the only government conceivable for human beings who are capable of rights. (OCS)”
“Doesn’t certainty about a universal negative require omniscience? Don’t you have to have knowledge of everywhere to know that there is no X anywhere?”
“There is a legend that in every age God spares the world the destruction it deserves only because there are a certain number of Abrahams, righteous men and women who keep the world alive by their righteousness and their prayers, by the mass and the gravity of their righteousness reverberating on the walls of the divine mercy. No one but God knows who these righteous are or how many there are.”
“(See C. S. Lewis’ essay “Meditation in a Toolshed” for this crucial distinction.) The”
“Principles are not conclusions but starting points, principia. When”
“you have nothing worth dying for, you will die. If you have nothing worth living for except mere living, you will not live.”
“It hardly ever attaches to any other sin except one, and is never heard from any organized group of people except one.”
“We cannot hate truth in general, all truth, as we cannot hate food in general, all food. But we can hate a particular truth even though it is good for us, as we can hate a particular food even though it is good for us:”
“the contemplative life not only does not exclude, but requires, the active life.”
“of all the natural virtues these four are “cardinal,” i.e., the hinges (“cardes”) on which all other virtues turn, the foundations on which all the other virtues are built.”
“It is faith (trust) that affirms that the light, the ultimate truth, is perfect love. (That’s because there is only one God, and He is both.) Therefore faith is the key to this absolute love of truth.”
“ora et labora, prayer and work.”
“murder and adultery are great crimes.”
“But a sneer can be a greater crime than a murder subjectively, for a sneer means “You are beneath contempt, you are sub-human, you are worthless scum, you are not even worth taking the trouble and time to kill”, while a murder may mean “You are important and formidable and you are my enemy, and thus I must kill you.” That can be a compliment, compared to a sneer.”
“(For instance, it is a “hate crime” to quote certain politically incorrect verses from the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in any public arena.)”
“Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?”
“There is little passion for anything except pleasure and comfort and security. Indeed, passion is confused with fanaticism.”
“St. Thomas thus detects a primary source of presumption in seeking genuinely good things, like human happiness on earth, as if we did not need divine grace to attain them; and in the hope that we can obtain God’s pardon and mercy without our confessing and repenting of sin.”
“Paradoxically, sloth reigns most in our technologically busy world where leisure has been abolished and life has been programmed and scheduled down to the last detail.”
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Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College, and author of numerous books as well as a popular writer on Christian theology, and specifically Roman Catholic apologetics. He also formulated together with Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, "Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God".
Kreeft took his A.B. at Calvin College (1959), and an M.A. at Fordham University (1961). In the same university he completed his doctoral studies in 1965. He briefly did post graduate studies at Yale University. He joined the Philosophy faculty of the Department of Philosophy of Boston College in 1965. In 1994 he was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.