“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”
Words of Ferris Bueller; John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
“I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”
Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 4-5.
“The philosopher as we understand him . . . will make use of religions for his project of cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever political and economic states are at hand . . . For the strong and independent who are prepared and predestined to command and in whom the reason and art of a governing race become incarnate, religion is one more means for overcoming resistances, for the ability to rule — as a bond that unites rulers and subjects and betrays and delivers the consciences of the latter, that which is most concealed and intimate and would like to elude obedience, to the former . . .”
To ordinary human beings, finally — the vast majority who exist for service and the general advantage, and who may exist only for that — religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of the heart, an ennobling of obedience. . . . Religion and religious significance spread the splendor of the sun over such ever-toiling human beings and make their own sight tolerable to them.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 61; cited in Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (Washington DC: Regnery, 2008), 160-61.
“. . . they [James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham] wanted all the moral benefits of Christianity, except without the Christianity part. They were the kind of self-assured chaps (so common in the nineteenth century) who took the fruits of centuries of Christian moral formation for granted even as they cheerfully chopped down the tree that had borne them. In consequence, they foolishly thought that because many Englishmen were generally solid and decent folk, moral solidity and decency could be counted on as standard equipment of human nature, and the whole religious thing could be thrown overboard as distracting nonsense.”
Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (Washington DC: Regnery, 2008), 77.
“Long ago, Aristotle warned that young men are incapable of listening to lectures on political philosophy because they are doubly disadvantaged: they are overflowing with enthusiasm for changing the world, and this trait is all the more dangerous because they have so little knowledge of it. To them, everything seems possible, so they are especially prone to latching on to overly cerebral, utopian political schemes that fix every single problem in short order. That is why . . . Aristotle did not follow Socrates in his habit of speaking philosophically about politics with the young. Too many of Socrates’ young proteges ended up endorsing tyranny.”
Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (Washington DC: Regnery, 2008), 60.
“After death what?”
Lloyd-Jones to a young man, to E. T. Rees, Church Secretary for the Bethlehem Forward Movement, and ten years his senior; Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 116.
“There was too much evidence. Had the evidence been weak, they would have scoffed and left him alone. They might have even been willing to let Jesus live to an old age. It was only because the evidence was so strong that Jesus was such a treat to them. They decided to kill both Jesus and the evidence [Lazarus]. Then they would not have to endure the existence of Lazarus, alive, as a challenge to their own authority. What they saw in Jesus was not a revealer of God but only a threat to their power and security.”
Dick Keyes, Seeing Through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), 143.
“Let it not be said that repentance is difficult. Things that are excellent deserve labour. Will not a man dig for gold in the ore though it makes him sweat? . . . Tomorrow may be our dying day; let this be our repenting day.”
Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994, first published in 1668), 8.
“It is one thing to produce a religious man — men can do that — but it takes the power of God in Jesus Christ to produce a Christian man, and there is no limit to that power.”
Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 162.
“The filmmaking process is slow and expensive, so movies are always the last idiom to respond to social evolution; the finest films from the seventies were really just the manifestation of how art and life had changed in the sixties.”
Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (New York: Scribner, 2004), 163.
