Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft
“The root of pride is found to consist in man not being in some way subject to God and His rule.”
“I will not serve”—”
“Christ deliberately hides Himself, disguises Himself, gives no physical sign of His Real Presence in the Eucharist, for a crucially important purpose: to test and elicit and strengthen our faith. If we saw miraculous signs in every Eucharist, or if the Eucharistic bread and wine had no taste, like other bread and wine, or even if we felt unique feelings each time we received the Eucharist, our faith would be less strong because it would have sensible or emotional crutches to lean on.”
“the way in which He worked miracles, namely because He worked miracles . . . of His own power, and not by praying (petitioning), as others do. .”
“Pride is really very simple. It is the attitude of the spoiled brat: “I want what I want when I want it, and if you say No to me, I hate you.” “Thy will be done” is the essential prayer of the saint; “my will be done” is the essential demand of the sinner.”
“Therefore if we lack the feeling of repentance but nevertheless want to repent; if we choose repentance with the will; we are then repenting, since repentance is that choice of the will.”
“He said He was God, in many ways and at many times in the Gospels. If this was not true, that would make Him either an insane fool, if He believed it, or a blasphemous liar, if He didn’t. His miracles, like His holiness, His love, and His wisdom, make it impossible to call Him a lunatic or a liar; therefore we must call Him Lord. This is the “Lord, liar, or lunatic” argument made famous by C. S. Lewis and Josh McDowell. It goes back to St. Thomas, to the early Christian apologists like St. Justin Martyr, and, as St. Thomas shows here, implicitly to Christ Himself.”
“The difference between a counsel and a commandment is that a commandment implies obligation, whereas a counsel is left to the option of the one to whom it is given.”
“However, when once perfect happiness has been attained, nothing will remain to be desired because then there will be full enjoyment of God,”
“desire will be at rest, not only our desire for God but all our desires; so that the joy of the blessed is full to perfection—indeed, over-full, since they will obtain more than they were capable of desiring,”
“democracy is probably intrinsically the best form of government, not because all men are equal in wisdom and virtue, or because all men are so good and wise that they should be given as much power as possible, but because all men are so foolish and wicked that no one should be given very great power over others.”
“The most serious religious objection to Purgatory, on the part of Protestants, is that the anticipation of the pains of Purgatory detracts from a happy death (“blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord”—Rev 14:13). But that is like saying that the pains of labor detract from the joy of childbirth. Deferred happiness is still happiness. In”
“Yet one’s joy will be greater than another’s on account of a fuller participation of the divine happiness”
“the instinct Rousseau found in himself and followed: the instinct to deceive, rob, and seduce rich ladies and to abandon his own children.”
“we forgive those who trespass”
“In essentials, unity; in inessentials, diversity; in all things, charity.”
“What is voluntary comes from the will; what is forced comes to the will from outside and prevents it from doing what it will.”
“Reason and truth themselves that are in question? Socrates never visited these terrifying heights and depths; they are distinctively modern and post-Christian. Socrates was a simple virgin; Christians are like married women (married to God), and modernists are like divorcees.”
“Our flesh, having been worn by the Most High Himself is the most noble mantle of all. The Manicheans and Buddhists and Platonists on the one hand, who belittle this flesh, and the gluttons and lechers and egoists on the other, who are slaves to it, are still living in division.”
“In practice I regarded prayer as somehow more spiritual than sitting on a committee, preaching as more anointed than plumbing. Only the revelation of Christ's Humanity infused vigor into my bloodless theoretical doctrine.”
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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.