Balmer Quotes & Sayings

Among Evangelical Christians, all of whom await the Second Coming of Jesus, there are historically two camps: postmillennialists and premillennialists. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most were of the "post" variety, meaning that they expected the Messiah's return after the thousand-year reign of peace. In order to hasten His arrival, they set out to create that harmonious world here and now, fighting for the abolition of slavery, prohibition of alcohol, public education, and women's literacy.
The chaos of the Civil War and industrialization caused many evangelicals to rethink their optimism. They determined that Jesus would actually arrive before the final judgment. Therefore any efforts toward a just society here on earth were futile; what mattered was perfecting one's faith. As historian Randall Balmer writes, these believers "retreated into a theology of despair, one that essentially ceded the temporal world to Satan and his minions. — Mark Sundeen

As long as the positive thinking doesn't become so extreme that you are in denial of reality, I don't like to see myself as a positive nor a negative type of person but primarily a realist in search of solutions to acknowledged problems......ignoring a problem doesn't make it disappear , that kind of thought process is just wishful thinking and sooner or later the reality will come around and bite you. — John Balmer

Building on exhaustive research and probing into such diverse enterprises as textbook production and marketing, public education, and state-level politics, Adam R. Shapiro has situated the Scopes trial within a much broader context than any scholar before him. Trying Biology also demonstrates how ideologues have used differing interpretations of the Scopes trial to advance their agendas. By situating the trial within this much broader framework, the author has significantly enlarged our understanding of the conversations between religion and science in twentieth-century America. — Randall Balmer

My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers. Compromise may work in politics. It's less appropriate to the realm of faith and belief. — Randall Balmer

On the law that requires women to wait twenty-four hours before they are permitted to have an abortion: I think it's a good law. The other day I wanted to go get an abortion. I really
wanted an abortion, but then I thought about it and it turned out I was just thirsty. — Sarah

It may not necessarily be the way I would like to see it happen, but the reality is we could still bring millions of people out of the darkness into the light. — Bob Menendez

Every time we mention the world, we must remember it is going to end. — Edwin Balmer

What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it! — Edwin Balmer

Did Matthew, Mark, and Luke use Paul's Epistles in writing their Gospels? I think they did, and this book shows why I think so. An investigation of the literary background of the Synoptic Gospels shows that Paul's Epistles and Hebrews, which most scholars believe was not written by Paul, influenced the stories that the synoptic evangelists told about Jesus. — David Oliver Smith

The search for perfection is all good and well ...
But to look for heaven is to live here in hell. — Sting

Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving. — Michael J. Gelb

I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses. — Michael Connelly

Lowell's best friend was the heroically moustached art director of a tobacco magazine that published in the same building where Lowell worked at plumbing. His name was Harry Balmer, and despite the evidence of his moustache he was nervous, compulsive, and wracked with small fears. He looked his best from across a wide room; the closer you got to him, the more he seemed to fall apart into a mass of twitches and gnawed finernails and the clearer it became that this big, smart-looking moustache was a kind of bush he was trying to hide behind. — L.J. Davis

I grew up with 'Friends' from day one and, like, 'Seinfeld' and 'Frazier,' those sorts of shows, but for sure, 'Friends' was it for our family. Like, we would watch every Thursday night at eight o'clock; I couldn't wait. — Kaley Cuoco

It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful or confused, and above all, sad and lonely. It was precisely through these experiences, which I had shunned for so long, that I became certain that I now understood something about my life, stemming from the core of my being, something that I could not have learned from any book. — Alice Miller

It is a new intoxication - annihilation. It multiplies every emotion. — Edwin Balmer

Love each other, even strangers. Nothing in the world matters more. — Lights