Francis Schaeffer Art Quotes & Sayings

He who loses the arts loses the culture. — Francis Schaeffer

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms. — Doris Lessing

How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I'm bugged because I can't believe I can't speak every language there is. But I feel I can when I sit and am with somebody, and I can dance for them. Because dance is dialogue without language. — Chita Rivera

Christian art today should be twentieth-century art. — Francis A. Schaeffer

How can art be sufficiently meaningful? If it is offered up merely before men, then it does not have a sufficient integration point. — Francis A. Schaeffer

As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the Lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the Lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture. — Francis Schaeffer

The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars. — Francis A. Schaeffer

People today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, but they do not know how to, because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image of God ... We are watching our culture put into effect the fact that when you tell men long enough that they are machines, it soon begins to show in their actions. You see it in our whole culture
in the theater of cruelty, in the violence in the streets, in the death of man in art and life. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Internet produces new business models and also reinvents traditional business models. — Marc Ostrofsky

I'm dead in the water if I can't see the all sufficient glory of God. — Louie Giglio

For me, it's all about being in a tiny room with little windows. It's almost like you have to be in a prison. — Madonna Ciccone

We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art, it can be far more devastating than if it is expressed in poor art. The greater the artistic expression, the more important it is to consciously bring it and it's worldview under the judgment of Christ and the Bible. The common reaction among many however, is just the opposite. Ordinarily, many seem to feel that the greater the art, the less we ought to be critical of its worldview. This we must reverse. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones. She was real. — Markus Zusak

Something significant, magical, and
inspiring happens with each word you read in the pages of a book. You explore new lands, meet new people, feel new emotions, and are no longer the same person you were one word prior to reading it. — Martha Sweeney

In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man. — Francis A. Schaeffer

With the Ford Foundation grant all of a sudden instead of being an artist that had made a couple of short films, I became a filmmaker who dabbled in the arts. — Bruce Conner

A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself. — Francis A. Schaeffer

What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be a vehicle for self-conscious evangelism. Christians ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. The Christian is the really free man. He is free to have imagination. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism. — Francis A. Schaeffer

No work of art is more important than the Christian's life, and every Christian is called to be an artist in this sense ... The Christian's life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world. — Francis Schaeffer

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship. — Rajneesh

As Christians, we must see that just because an artist -even a great artist- portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true. — Francis A. Schaeffer

What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards: (1) technical excellence, (2) validity, (3) intellectual content, the world view which comes through and (4) the integration of content and vehicle. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Art is a reflection of God's creativity, an evidence that we are made in the image of God. — Francis Schaeffer

To demand the art forms of yesterday in either word systems or art is a bourgeois failure. — Francis A. Schaeffer

My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once — J.J. Johnson

Shock is shock. Your body goes into shock, regardless of it being real blood or fake blood. The mind sends powerful messages to all the various glands and secretions in the body. It's impossible trying to act it; it just happens. It's a very important question: no acting. — Ben Kingsley