Peter Kreeft Quotes & Sayings

Atheism cheapens everything it touches - look at the results of communism, the most powerful form of atheism on earth. — Peter Kreeft

The Church is God's Bride. All the saints and mystics say the ultimate purpose of human life, the highest end for which we were made, is the Spiritual Marriage. This is not socially relative; it is eternal. And in it, the soul is spiritually impregnated by God, not vice versa. That is the ultimate reason why God must always be he to us, never she. Religion is essentially heterosexual and therefore fruitful. — Peter Kreeft

Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains. — Peter Kreeft

Put the Protestant flint and the Catholic steel together, and you will kindle a fire that will burn all around the world. — Peter Kreeft

God loves us more than we love Him. — Peter Kreeft

All of history is a kind of broken marriage and God puts it back together again. — Peter Kreeft

Now I see that God prefers to work through intermediaries - Mary and the saints ... He wants us to pray through Mary and not only directly. — Peter Kreeft

A certain participation in happiness can be had in this life, but perfect and true happiness cannot be had in this life. — Peter Kreeft

The love of God is no human projection, but the wrath of God is. In fact, what we call the wrath of God is really the love of God experienced by a fool. — Peter Kreeft

We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road. — Peter Kreeft

Socrates: "Know thyself." For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints. — Peter Kreeft

One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility. — Peter Kreeft

When feminists become saints, we will become their pupils. — Peter Kreeft

Why would the apostles lie? ... Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks! — Peter Kreeft

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love. — Peter Kreeft

Not all prayer is in words, because not all conversation is in words. — Peter Kreeft

Christians are good citizens, and take human laws very seriously, for religious reasons, not just for secular reasons. That's why they are better citizens than atheists, and certainly better citizens than moral relativists and subjectivists: they have stronger motives for obedience. — Peter Kreeft

We too can love with the will even when we do not have loving emotions or feelings. We make this distinction toward ourselves quite easily, so we should be able to do it toward others too when necessary. — Peter Kreeft

The "good news" part of this point is that we can cooperate in salvation, as we cannot cooperate in creation. — Peter Kreeft

In this deed is my hope, not in the mere timeless fact that God is love. I am saved not by the beautiful Trinitarian life of God but by the gory death of God. I am saved not by the touching of the three Persons in Heaven but by the touching of this love on the Cross to my life. — Peter Kreeft

In essentials, unity; in inessentials, diversity; in all things, charity. — Peter Kreeft

Since God writes history as man writes words, the literal events of history can be signs of other truths just as human words are signs of things other than themselves. — Peter Kreeft

Great stories give us the grace of a mystical experience, on the level of the imagination. — Peter Kreeft

Sacraments are that literal, that physical. Salvation is very physical. If the woman with the hemorrhage had touched the hem of St. Peter's garment instead of Christ's, her faith alone would not have healed her until it was joined to His body by her touch. - Unless God had willed to heal her that way, of course. God can work outside his sacraments, and often does. There — Peter Kreeft

You see, God just will not let us flunk out of His school of love. He insists on remedial lessons until we get it right. For this whole world is a school set up by Love Himself to teach us to love. — Peter Kreeft

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all. — Peter Kreeft

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked. — Peter Kreeft

After a lifetime in academia, I have discovered that there is only one requirement for someone to actually believe any of the one hundred most absurd ideas possible for a human mind to conceive: you must be an intellectual. Some ideas are so ridiculous that only a Ph.D. could believe them. — Peter Kreeft

Lack of prayer is the cause of lack of time. — Peter Kreeft

Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists. — Peter Kreeft

But how can we love someone if we don't like him? Easy-we do it to ourselves all the time. We don't always have tender, comfortable feelings about ourselves; sometimes we feel foolish, stupid, asinine, or wicked. But we always love ourselves: we always seek our own good. Indeed, we feel dislike toward ourselves, we berate ourselves, precisely because we love ourselves; because we care about our good, we are impatient with our bad. — Peter Kreeft

Charity transcends mere virtue. Yet once this charity exists, it fulfills all virtue, as the New Law fulfills the Old and as grace fulfills nature. Charity is the heart and soul of all virtue. — Peter Kreeft

If we seek the truth without realizing how far we are from it, we will be dogmatists. If we realize how far we are from the truth but do not seek it, we will be skeptics. If we both seek the truth and realize how far we are from it, we will be wise. — Peter Kreeft

The only reason you are not yet a saint is because you do not wholly want to be one ... — Peter Kreeft

We are insane. That is what sin is. Sanctity is identitical with sanity. It means living the truth, living in reality. Sin always substitutes unreality for reality. — Peter Kreeft

Great saints have often been made out of great sinners, but not one was ever made out of a wimp. — Peter Kreeft

The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither. — Peter Kreeft

Americans' deepest religion is often equality. The notion that Christ alone is God-superior, authoritative, supernatural-and that Christ's teaching and person is far greater than Buddha's, or Muhammad's, or Moses's, no matter how much great and good wisdom may be contained in those others, is scandalous. — Peter Kreeft

Live in robust sanity, in holy obedience to the ordinary." (The Message) "In an insane asylum like the world, simple sanity can be a heroic achievement. — Peter Kreeft

So nothing can be ours by right, by nature, or by necessity. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. This is the thing even God cannot do for me. It really is my choice. God can love, but He cannot compel my free love. If it is compelled, it is not free. If it is free, it is not compelled. — Peter Kreeft

But God loves men more than angels in intensity, because He became one of us, — Peter Kreeft

The most compelling evidence for God's existence is Christ. If God does not exist, then Christ was the biggest fool who ever lived. — Peter Kreeft

Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does — Peter Kreeft

Condoms are about as effective against AIDS as a twenty-four-chamber gun instead of a six-chamber gun when playing Russian roulette. — Peter Kreeft

Even God cannot make us love him. "Forced love" is a meaningless impossibility, like "virtuous sin". — Peter Kreeft

God is love. Wraith is how His love appears to us when we sin or rebel or run away from Him. The very light that is meant to help us appears to us as our enemy when we seek the darkness. — Peter Kreeft

There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself. — Peter Kreeft

When I ask my "Catholic" students what they would say to God if they died tonight and God asked them why He should let them into Heaven, fewer than 5% ever even mention Jesus Christ. — Peter Kreeft

Man's soul has three powers, and God left him prophets for all three: Jewish moralists for his will, Greek philosophers for his mind, and pagan mythmakers for his heart and imagination and feelings. Of course, the latter two are not infallible. — Peter Kreeft

There is no scientific proof that only scientific proofs are good proofs; no way to prove by the scientific method that the scientific method is the only valid method. — Peter Kreeft

It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else. — Peter Kreeft

We are fallen fools, most of our philosophy is not "the proper use of human reason" but the improper use of human reason. — Peter Kreeft

One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth. — Peter Kreeft

As C.S. Lewis says, "God whispers in our pleasures but shouts in our pains. Pain is his megaphone to rouse a dulled world. — Peter Kreeft

Prayer is not only conversation, it is transformation. It is not only light, it is fire. And the closer you get to Him, the hotter the fire gets. Words begin to melt. The first word that melts in His presence is the word 'I.' That is His unique name. The closer you get to Him, the harder it is to begin a sentence with 'I.' It melts in the fire of 'thou. — Peter Kreeft

Thus, though Christians are in no way bound by the Jewish ceremonial or civil laws (because they were all in some way preparatory for Christ), we are still under the Ten Commandments in one way, though not in two other ways. — Peter Kreeft

Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature. — Peter Kreeft

I think nobody alive today is a more powerful agent of conversion than someone like Mother Teresa. You can refute arguments but not her life. When she came to the National Prayer Breakfast and lectured President Clinton about abortion, he had nothing to say to her. He can't argue with a saint. It's too bad there isn't an easier way, because becoming a saint is not the easiest thing in the world. It's much easier to become an apologist or a philosopher or a theologian. — Peter Kreeft

Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God. — Peter Kreeft

Love is the binding force on every level of existence. — Peter Kreeft

Suffering is not blessed because it is suffering but because it is [Christ's]. Suffering is not the context that explains the cross; the cross is the context that explains suffering. — Peter Kreeft

God's love is as objective as light. Because the sun in a sense is light, or the source of light rather than being lit, it really gives its light to the earth. And because the earth really receives light from the sun, it is really transformed every morning from darkness to light. Just as objectively, because God is love, God really gives love to us. And because we receive real life-changing love from God, we are really transformed from darkness to light. — Peter Kreeft

Pilate's skeptical sneer "What is truth?" was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world's stupidest question was three words; God's profoundest answer was one Word. — Peter Kreeft

The scripture notion of truth is not an abstract, static, and timeless formula, but is something that comes true in time as the fulfillment of a divine promise. Truth happens in history. — Peter Kreeft

No emotion, merely as an emotion, is a sin, because we cannot directly control the arising of an emotion in our soul. — Peter Kreeft

We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it's worth it, that it pays. — Peter Kreeft

Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction. — Peter Kreeft

True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross. — Peter Kreeft

Only Judaism and Christianity are religions of public record, eyewitnessed facts. — Peter Kreeft

An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth. — Peter Kreeft

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.
Bertha: What's that?
Socrates: Philosophy.
Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here.
Socrates: Where are they?
Bertha: In the philosophy department.
Socrates: Philosophy is not department.
Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.
Socrates: Are they dangerous?
Bertha: Of course not.
Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers. — Peter Kreeft

(4) But only man knows consciously and rationally, and only man's loves can be conscious and rational and responsible through free will. — Peter Kreeft

It is said that there are three sources of evil, "the world, the flesh, and the Devil"; but the world and the flesh would be innocent were it not for the Devil. — Peter Kreeft

A saint is Christ's bride, totally attached, faithful, dependent. A saint is also totally independent, detached from idols and from other husbands ... A saint is higher than anyone else in the world. A saint is the real mountain climber. A saint is also lower than anyone else in the world. As with water, he flows to the lowest places - like Calcutta. — Peter Kreeft

To those of you who would classify yourselves as conservatives I would say, meditate long and hard on Jesus' saying "Whatever you do to the least of these you have done to me". — Peter Kreeft

Wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.) — Peter Kreeft

Those who know, do not say; those who say, do not know. — Peter Kreeft

The transformation of Christ's bodily scars into badges of glory shows us what happens, even in this life, to our souls when we lovingly and trustingly offer our sufferings to Christ and unite them to His. He turns "deformity" into "dignity". — Peter Kreeft

Love gives you eyes. — Peter Kreeft

when a subject corrects his prelate, he ought to do so in a becoming manner, not with impudence and harshness but with gentleness and respect. . . . — Peter Kreeft

No one justifies lying, cheating, betraying, promise breaking, devastating and harming strangers. But we expect and we tolerate doing this to the one person in the world we promised most seriously to be faithful to forever: we justify divorce. — Peter Kreeft

Another principle demons use in spiritual warfare: multiple attacks, from many directions at once, or with many different weapons at once. — Peter Kreeft

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee. — Peter Kreeft

When we use the prayers of the Church, we use the greatest prayers ever written, the words and sentiments of great saints and hymn writers and liturgists. We do this rightly, because God deserves the best, and these prayers are the best. They were composed by other people, but we make them our own when we pray them, like a lover reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare to his beloved. It is Shakespeare's gift: Shakespeare gave it to him, and now he gives it to his beloved. — Peter Kreeft

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively. — Peter Kreeft

Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil. — Peter Kreeft

We pray to obey God, not to 'play God'. We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to 'let God be God'. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt. 7:7). — Peter Kreeft

Life is always fatal. No one gets out of it alive — Peter Kreeft

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. — Peter Kreeft

I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets. — Peter Kreeft

In every sin, we choose to believe the devil's lie rather than God's truth. — Peter Kreeft

Sin has made us stupid, so that we can only learn the hard way. — Peter Kreeft

Mercy is Truth clothed; judgment is Truth naked. — Peter Kreeft

It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children. — Peter Kreeft

Every gift requires two freedoms: the giver's and the receiver's. — Peter Kreeft

In a sense "all the way to Heaven is Heaven" (St. Catherine). — Peter Kreeft

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures. When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred. — Peter Kreeft

The Lutheran alternative to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation which is called consubstantiation, in which the bread and wine are not changed but added to, so that Christ becomes really present along with them but they remain. — Peter Kreeft

The more we realize we are loved, the more ashamed we are not to love back. The more we sin as a violation of love, not just of law, the more powerful a motive we will have to overcome it. For sin is attractive to us (otherwise we would never be attracted to it) and can be cast out only by something more attractive. — Peter Kreeft

the way in which He worked miracles, namely because He worked miracles . . . of His own power, and not by praying (petitioning), as others do. . — Peter Kreeft