Douglas Wilson Quotes & Sayings

The point of a true education is to, by the grace of God, learn how to refuse to let the soul get old. — Douglas Wilson

Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other.
The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists. — Douglas Wilson

A lot of aspiring writers quote the right people, but they do so like Mary Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. They quote Austen like Mary quoted her eighteenth-century bromides, and were Austen here to see them do it, she'd slap them right into her next book, and it wouldn't be pretty. — Douglas Wilson

It's a character I've created. Actually, that's pretty much the opposite of me, off a farm in the Midwest. — Douglas Wilson

In a world of spiritual eunuchs, it is good to find a man who is more than simply male. — Douglas Wilson

In Acts 14:1, we are told, "At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed." This is what should be sought in Christian schools, not just teaching, but effective teaching. Christian content alone is insufficient. It must be presented in a certain way, and that way cannot be reduced to technique. Nevertheless, God has graciously made it possible to bring people the truth by how the truth is presented. — Douglas Wilson

God blesses giving, so every use of language, down to the lowliest tweet, ought to be thought of as a gift to others. — Douglas Wilson

This is why stories like this, with great evils in them, are necessary for children to read. Kids just got here - they are still figuring things out, and stories are one of the central realities that can help them. Chesterton says somewhere that stories about dragons and knights do not teach children to fear dragons. They had dragons under the bed already. They had the fear already. The stories actually teach children that dragons can be killed. And — Douglas Wilson

Leftism is that impulse that wants to establish coercion and call it community. Apply — Douglas Wilson

Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. — Douglas Wilson

I'm having the time of my life and I'm glad people are enjoy it. — Douglas Wilson

God gave us minds to think with and hearts to thank with. Instead we use our hearts to think about the world as we would like it to have been, and we use our minds to come up with rationalizations for our ingratitude. We are a murmuring, discontented, unhappy, ungrateful people. And because we think we want salvation from our discontents ... — Douglas Wilson

I was supposed to be the antithesis of Frank. — Douglas Wilson

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of
Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions. — Douglas Wilson

Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This is why individual heart transformation, not legislation, is fundamental to national reformation. The person and work of Jesus is not optional. — Douglas Wilson

Fortunately, given the state of criticism these days, lots of people miss - especially the feminists, who usually throw like a girl. — Douglas Wilson

Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person. — Douglas Wilson

The reign of Christ has been established. The nations who object to this settlement trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon. — Douglas Wilson

There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. — Douglas Wilson

Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, and our political sins are not exempt from this salvation. Why would our political sins (which frequently have been among our foulest sins) be excluded? Jesus — Douglas Wilson

You don't have the right to be left alone with that abortion decision. The child is present ... you are not alone. — Douglas Wilson

Christian men ought not refrain from the sexual pollutions that surround us because they object to lovemaking; they refrain because they object to the wanton vandalism of it. Our culture is doing to sex what people who chew with their mouths open do to food. — Douglas Wilson

Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace - that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth - every manifestation of it - and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The — Douglas Wilson

The apostle James tells us that a man who can control his tongue can control the rest of his body as well. This goes double for the man who is putting what the tongue does into a more permanent setting. — Douglas Wilson

I believe firmly in plodding. Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one-hundred-yard dashing. Doing a little bit now is far better than hoping to do a lot on the morrow. So redeem the fifteen minute spaces. Chip away at it. — Douglas Wilson

Ripping up carpet is easy, tiling is the issue. — Douglas Wilson

Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly - 'Did God say not to eat from any tree?' In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available. — Douglas Wilson

The State is not the hope of the world; it is an institution grounded in the threat of violence, whether via capital punishments or petty bureaucratic intrusions. — Douglas Wilson

But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink. — Douglas Wilson

Education is the process of selling someone on books. — Douglas Wilson

I don't feel safe around anything when Jesus is not the Lord of it. Calvinism without Jesus is deadly; it's fatalism, it's simply Islam. We need Jesus. When the precious doctrines [of Calvinism] are used to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, morbidity, slander, gnat-stringing, and more, the soul is not safe. — Douglas Wilson

Attaching "produced at Berkeley, Harvard, MIT" to a ridiculous argument immediately makes it cogent to many. That's part of life, but let's not pretend that it's rationality. — Douglas Wilson

If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else — Douglas Wilson

Objectivity is a false god, and the worship of this idol is particularly pernicious in disciplines like journalism and history. It is not possible to be objective
although of course it is possible to be honest. By pretending to attain to objectivity, a writer's fundamental faith commitments are not eliminated, but rather submerged
and they then come out in interesting and intellectually dishonest ways. — Douglas Wilson

There are two basic approaches to life- one in which the world is a world of scarcity, given to us by the skinflint god, and the other in which the world is a world of endless possibilities, bestowed on us by a loving Father. — Douglas Wilson

Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen of them, to give him an 87 percent. But we go far beyond this. A student writes an essay on a sunset, let us say, and the teacher writes 87 percent at the top of that paper. What he is saying, in effect, is that there is a mathematical metaphor operative here. The figure of 87 is to 100 what this submitted essay is ... to what? What on earth is this supposed to mean? — Douglas Wilson

If boys don't learn, men won't know. — Douglas Wilson

As you read, allow your reading to cluster around your interests. — Douglas Wilson

Honor must start in the heart, but if it ends there, it isn't honor. Honor must be expressed through words, symbols, actions, or gestures. Honor is among the most incarnational of the virtues. It must have feet and hands. — Douglas Wilson

There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013. — Douglas Wilson

Reformers must remember always that religion shapes culture, and culture trumps politics. — Douglas Wilson

we have somehow assumed that the interests of speed, or some other function of athletic performance, somehow set aside the requirements of propriety and modesty. In the ancient world, athletes competed naked, and in the modern world, in some events, they might as well be. — Douglas Wilson

I am the young, edgy New Yorker. — Douglas Wilson

For the people of God, the Word of God leaves pleasant bruises. — Douglas Wilson

God picks us up where we are, not where we should have been — Douglas Wilson

Whether it was working on theatre sets or stage lighting, I didn't realize most all of the skills I was exposed to were going to come in handy later on when I became a designer. — Douglas Wilson

The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing? — Douglas Wilson

I didn't know the stakes at the start. But I do know now, and now is when God decided to let me know what the stakes might be. Maybe He didn't trust me with that info earlier. — Douglas Wilson

Propaganda (things to be propagated) is inescapable. It is not *whether* certain values will be propagated, but rather, *which* values will be propagated. — Douglas Wilson

Violent overthrow of the revolution is revolutionary, and compromise with the revolution is revolutionary. — Douglas Wilson

And so it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a teenager to enter the kingdom of heaven listening to the Dave Matthews Band. — Douglas Wilson

The independence of art from worldview and worldview concerns is a myth. Every work of art is produced within a framework of worldview assumptions. — Douglas Wilson

Only a madman would try to market headache medicine today under the name John's Headache Pills. This would be insufficiently techno-marvelous. No, the name must sound like it carne out of a laboratory yesterday ... Zantistat 100, or something like that. — Douglas Wilson

We live in a narcissistic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having read, without the antecedent labor of actually reading. — Douglas Wilson

God could have made every creature just exactly the same, all of us round and shiny like little ball bearings one centimeter across, with all the invisible serial numbers distinguishing us one from another hidden away in the decrees and secret counsels of God. And there we would all be, pretty much all of us really bored. But what He actually did was make the gaudiest show ever, which started at the beginning of our story when Adam looked at Eve for the first time and, as already noted, started speaking poetry. — Douglas Wilson

Why stress tomorrow when you can stress today? — Douglas Wilson

God's grace is a tsunami that will carry us all away, and deposit us in places we would not have anticipated - and all of them good. — Douglas Wilson

How would you describe the spiritual aroma of your home? The source of this aroma is the relationship between husband and wife. Many can fake an attempt at keeping God's standards in some external way. What we cannot fake is the resulting, distinctive aroma of pleasure to God. Most marriage books address the mere externals of marriage, without seeking to understand the heart issues. Godly marriages proceed from an obedient heart, and the greatest desire of an obedient heart is the glory of God, not the happiness of the household. — Douglas Wilson

Without a shared hermeneutic, authority is meaningless. — Douglas Wilson

One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that. — Douglas Wilson

If you keep the law of God, you are not described in Scripture as a pinched legalist, but rather as happy (Prov. 29:18). — Douglas Wilson

Criticism should be received as a kindness (Ps. 141:5). — Douglas Wilson

She wasn't really going to church anywhere, but she remained a contemporary evangelical to the back teeth. She had lost her faith while still managing to hang on to all the platitudes. — Douglas Wilson

Being in the design industry, I've tended to meet more people who are affected by HIV and AIDS. — Douglas Wilson

The church has ministers - which was a gift of Jesus Christ Himself from Heaven - and the church also has a professional class, which may or may not be a gift from Heaven. — Douglas Wilson

The TSA must think we're mushrooms. You know, the way they are trying to keep us in the dark, and the way they keep feeding us a fertilizing agent that comes from the south end of a north-bound cow. — Douglas Wilson

Throughout the country, I see the same design problems and solutions over and over. — Douglas Wilson

You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe. — Douglas Wilson

We are like fruitflies, measuring everything in terms of our own lifespan. But since our lifespans are so short, our perspective is entirely wrong.
God, who inhabits eternity, sees things differently. He knows that our lives are just a mist. We should trust Him. It was not that long ago that Jesus came and it will not be that long before He returns. — Douglas Wilson

The fulfillment of the cultural mandate involves hard work, and men need to be hard in order to do the work. — Douglas Wilson

Whether the Bible is Law or Gospel depends on the spiritual condition of the one hearing it. If someone is regenerate and loves God, then the whole Bible is Gospel to him. If someone is unregenerate and hates God, the whole Bible is Law to him, the whole thing condemns him. — Douglas Wilson

Most religious people use their religion as a source of good advice, and the good advice only condemns them when they fail. This mistake is even made by professing Christians, — Douglas Wilson

That's why moderns have to have hobbies. They can't find satisfaction in their money-earning work, so many seek creative satisfaction in model planes and trains. — Douglas Wilson

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let's call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers. — Douglas Wilson

Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary. — Douglas Wilson

In Scripture, doctrine is practical and high doctrine is highly practical. Those who disparage doctrine for the sake of practice are impractical. Those who disparage practice for the sake of doctrine are unskilled in the word of righteousness. We are never to put apart what God has joined together. — Douglas Wilson

He who walks with the wise will be wise, Scripture saith, and he who walks with the witty will eventually start to pop off himself. — Douglas Wilson

I want to get the point across that you may not have money to give to a charity, whether that is Ronald McDonald House or Broadway Cares or DIFFA, but you can help RAISE money or give your time and talents. — Douglas Wilson

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all. — Douglas Wilson

The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht. — Douglas Wilson

The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else. — Douglas Wilson

Modern evangelicals like to compare holy things to soft drinks, designer clothes, [and other products in] our modern consumerist culture. The problem with this is not ... the comparison to a created thing. The problem is that it is ... bad poetry. The Bible compares God to very mundane things, but does so with poetic wonder. God shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. — Douglas Wilson

We cannot pursue a classical and Christian education as a fad. We are not purchasing intellectual hula hoops for the kids. — Douglas Wilson

Fatherlessness is a rot that is eating away at the modern soul. — Douglas Wilson

Aside from your name on the cover of the book, your voice should be your most distinctive signature. — Douglas Wilson

They weren't really looking for repentance; postmodern irony would do. When — Douglas Wilson

Oscar Wilde once defined a gentleman as one who never insulted somebody else accidentally. — Douglas Wilson

The trick is to state what we know in a recognizable fashion but in a way that is slightly off, in a way that arrests us. — Douglas Wilson

If John had been paying close attention to Lester's face, he would have seen him go white, the way men do when they see a trap swinging shut on them. — Douglas Wilson

I've made an incredible amount of money stealing fans from homeowners. — Douglas Wilson

I know people don't think I work. — Douglas Wilson

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl the fatherhood of God lies behind everything. This apparent chaotic world is not chaotic at all; if we step back and take it all in with the right perspective, we see that it is an intricately designed carnival ride. There is a fatherly purpose in it: it turns out that we thought we were being born into a world full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but what was happening is that our Father was taking us to a particularly spectacular fair with some really gnarly rides. In — Douglas Wilson

Confession of sins is not meritorious: to confess sins as a way of placing God in your debt is not dealing with sin; it is committing another sin. The context of all confession must be the free grace of justification. — Douglas Wilson

You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate. — Douglas Wilson

I'm very flattered, but I don't think I'm the sexiest man on the planet. — Douglas Wilson

Little did we know it would be watched by millions of people and break viewing records. — Douglas Wilson

One of our great problems today is that we have gotten caught up in our culture-wide quest for authenticity. We want our jeans authentic (pre-ripped at the factory), we want our apples authentic (grown locally instead of somewhere else), we want our music authentic (underground bands nobody ever heard of), we want our lettuce authentic (organically manured), we want our literature authentic (full of angst), we want our movies authentic (subtitles), and we want our coffee tables authentic (purchased from a genuine peasant while we were on some eco-tour). In short, we are a bunch of phonies. We are superficial all the way down. — Douglas Wilson

And so, at Christmas, how are we called to imitate Mary, as we treasure up in our hearts the wonderful revelations given to us in God's Word? First, we should focus on the gospel: in one sense, of course, Jesus is the reason for the season. But in another fundamental sense, sin is the reason for the season. We have not entered into a season of feel-goodism, where we think about soft snow and candlelight, with silver bells in the distance. Remember Ramah weeping for her children, remember our abortion mills, remember how dark this world is without Christ, and then cling in faith to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Mary's only Savior is our only hope for salvation as well. — Douglas Wilson

Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. — Douglas Wilson

The one who was never a sinner became (through God's imputation) completely identified with sin, our sin. He was completely identified with an innumerable host of sins, took them all upon himself, closed his arms upon them in an obedient embrace, and died. That is why there is no condemnation. — Douglas Wilson