Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
If you want to be a better writer, read better books.
You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.
Just as it is counterproductive for a secular liberal to take offense at a well-intentioned “Merry Christmas,” it doesn’t help if a conservative says “Merry Christmas” when he really means “Eat yuletide, you atheistic bastard!”
I am convinced that one of the major reasons people reject the gospel is not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial — not big enough for the complexities of the modern world. So I am an unabashed and unrepentant believer in the necessity of using our minds in every aspect of our Christian life.
Christians need not be afraid of real learning… The facts are always on God’s side. But we must remain ever vigilant against the distortions that arise from being impressed by one’s own pursuit of learning. …[It is] not the facts themselves that corrupt but the pride of the inner spirit found in the human mind.
The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?
Unfortunately much of contemporary preaching seems out of balance, having become too much like what someone described as “a mild-mannered man standing before mild-mannered people urging them to become more mild-mannered.”
I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.
The early church didn’t explode throughout the ancient world because of the professional gurus, but because of the guys in the trades and commerce who were bent on gossiping the good news wherever they went.
God is looking for people through whom he can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do ourselves.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much.
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it's wrong.
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, but by killing all those who opposed them.
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.
We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization... We must have passion—indeed hearts on fire for the things of God. But that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world.
Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.
I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough.
The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.
The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small, impoverished souls.
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.
Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety.
False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel.
The Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness but in the light. Intellectual slothfulness is but a quack remedy for unbelief; the true remedy is consecration of intellectual power to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You are remembered for the rules you break.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
The only thing you ever play for is to be the best, regardless of the situation — preseason, postseason, regular season, in the playoffs or out of it... I don't see how you can ever step out on the field and not care.
I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
That government is best which governs least.
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
The very man who has argued you down, will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said.
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
True worship always combines heart and head, emotion and thought, affection and reflection, doxology and theology.
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!," but "That's funny..."
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Christians should humbly try to be the smartest people on the planet.
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
I have only two comforts to live upon; the one is in the perfections of Christ; the other is in the imperfections of all Christians.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Those who keep God at a comfortable distance throughout this life will end up being an uncomfortable distance from God for eternity.
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
Courage is being scared to death—but saddling up anyway.
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.
When all is said and done, more is said than done.
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
If a person does not become what he understands, he does not really understand it.
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
It is a mysterious thing, and what has puzzled and amazed many a good Christian, that there should be that which is so divine and precious, as the saving grace of God, and the new and divine nature dwelling in the same heart, with so much corruption, hypocrisy, and iniquity, in a particular saint.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
It is unproductive to try to believe something beyond your grounds for believing it and dishonest to act as if you believe something more strongly than you do.
Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
There are many believers who, even if they are not themselves irrational, preserve an unwarranted respect for irrationality, as if incoherence were a hallmark of "deep" truths.
Hug and cry first, give God-centered explanations later.
Practice makes perfect, so be careful what you practice.
If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
The less you talk, the more you're listened to.
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
The demons' cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do God's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
There are two categories of people in the world: those who divide people into categories and those who don’t.
God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.
Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe.
Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.
God is glorified in his people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
A man of ability, for the chief of his reading, should select such works as he feels are beyond his power to have produced. What can other books do for him but waste his time or augment his vanity.
One of the reasons why men are not occupied with great thoughts and interests is the way in which their lives are overfilled with little things.
Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so.
Study and reflect on this stuff until you are catapulted into transcendental intellectual ecstasy.
I want to go to heaven, but it's the last place I want to go.
I heard that one back when the dead sea was still sick.
Ultimately I'm a "pro-millennialist"—whatever the millennium is, I'm for it.
Character is not made in a crisis—it is only exhibited.
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