Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft
“Even though we hate some of the things we do or feel, we hate them only because we love ourselves. We feel we are unworthy of such bad stuff.”
“Dostoyevsky says, “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams” (The Brothers Karamazov).”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“We cannot go from our darkness to his light, because we are working in the dark. But God can go from his light to our darkness, because he is working in the light.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“For even though our prayer-contact with God may be almost infinitely poor, the God we thus contact is infinitely rich!”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“Delight is a subjective reason for praying, but it is a valid one.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“Becoming saints is the meaning of life. It is why we exist. It is why God created us.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Prayer for Beginners
“God’s solution to the problem of evil is his Son Jesus Christ. The Father’s love sent his Son to die for us to defeat the power of evil in human nature: that’s the heart of the Christian story.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
“We make a big deal out of Christmas; we should make an even bigger deal out of March 25. The greatest event in history, the Incarnation, happened at the Annunciation, not the Nativity.”
“The true philosopher lives his life as a dress rehearsal for death.”
― Peter Kreeft ,
from Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ
topics: philosophy-fiction-jesus
“Honesty is a moral virtue, a matter of the will. Honesty means willing the truth with the whole of your heart. This demands sacrifice. We have little hope of attaining honesty unless we realize how demanding it is. It demands sacrifice of self-will, self-image, the desire to win, and the comfort of being right. The “honesty” often praised today is usually only emotional honesty with others, not intellectual honesty with one’s self; only “letting it all hang out,” not asking what is the real truth. Sometimes “honesty” is only a code word for shamelessness. Rarely does it mean the absolute, fanatical, selfless love of truth.”
“When you’re in a burning building looking out of the twentieth story window down to the street and all you see is clouds of billowing smoke, you have to choose to believe the firemen below who tell you they have a safety net and it’s safe to jump. When the clouds of smoke disappear, you don’t have to believe any more: you see it. In this world, it’s a leap in the dark; in the next world, it’s a leap in the light.”
“It's the most essential thing of all just because it's not a matter of how you do it at all, but of whether you do it. Like being born, or cooking: how you do it is less important than whether you do it. You can find thousands of books on prayer that give you methods of praying, hundreds of "hows"; but they do you no good at all unless you actually pray. Otherwise it's like reading a cookbook instead of cooking. You can't eat a cookbook!”
“A God made in the world's image can't save the world.”
“No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior.”
“Praying anywhere" can easily become "praying nowhere", just as "praying anytime" can easily become "praying at no time". Everything in general becomes nothing in particular".”
“Love makes more waves than hate. Wicked men will hate and fear you more for loving them than for hating them. They will quickly forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right. Saints always go into the ghettos, especially the moral ghettos. They make waves. Moses made waves. Jesus made waves. Muhammad made waves. The waves make the garbage come to the surface, and the waves of garbage often drown the saints and make them martyrs, white corpuscles that give themselves up to fight an infection. Saints are society's white corpuscles, society's saviors. If nobody wants to crucify you, you're not doing your job. Or else your job isn't his work.”
“There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself.”
“God loves us more than we love Him.”
“Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s O.K. By this standard, God is not good it he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.”
Group of Brands
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Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College, and author of numerous books as well as a popular writer on Christian theology, and specifically Roman Catholic apologetics. He also formulated together with Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, "Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God".
Kreeft took his A.B. at Calvin College (1959), and an M.A. at Fordham University (1961). In the same university he completed his doctoral studies in 1965. He briefly did post graduate studies at Yale University. He joined the Philosophy faculty of the Department of Philosophy of Boston College in 1965. In 1994 he was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.