Quotes from Douglas Wilson

One of the most pernicious errors that has gotten abroad in the Christian community is the error of sentimentalism - the view that evil is to be evaded, rather than the more robust Christian view that it is to be conquered. The Christian believes that evil is there to be fought, the dragon is there to be slain. The sentimentalist believes that evil is to be resented.

It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people.

Most of what is shaping you in the course of your reading you will not be able to remember. The most formative years of my life were the first five, and if those years were to be evaluated on the basis of my ability to pass a test on them, the conclusion would be that nothing important happened then, which would be false. The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them.

And so it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a teenager to enter the kingdom of heaven listening to the Dave Matthews Band.

Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary.

The issue is not the thing, but rather our approach to the thing. Same as with food. Our temptation is to objectify the problem, trying to locate sin in the stuff—in the tobacco, in the alcohol, in the gun, in the donut—instead of where sin is actually located, which is right under the breastbone.

How is it possible to live like a machine and bear fruit like a tree?

Joy is deep satisfaction in the will of God, and this must be coupled with recognizing the reality that God's will is everywhere and in everything. There is no place where we may go and be allowed to murmur or despair because God's will is somehow "not there.

Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This is why individual heart transformation, not legislation, is fundamental to national reformation. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all.

Plod diligently. Plodding generally goes in the same direction, while pottering doesn't.

one of the glories of education is the opportunity to hear the truth come out of a human being with blood in the veins and air in the lungs, and not just off a printed page.

The apostle James tells us that a man who can control his tongue can control the rest of his body as well. This goes double for the man who is putting what the tongue does into a more permanent setting.

God blesses giving, so every use of language, down to the lowliest tweet, ought to be thought of as a gift to others.

Criticism should be received as a kindness (Ps. 141:5).

One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that.

Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called "hate crimes" legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed.

Information can get from a professors lecture notes and into a student's notebook without passing through the mind of either.

We need to make sure we are doing what Jesus said and not what we thought Jesus must have said. The textbook case against Christian activism can be made in one word—Prohibition—the word that would have made the Lord Jesus at Cana into a moonshiner felon. We did a great job there of setting aside the Word of God for the sake of our tradition

The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht.

Imagination, as Napoleon once remarked, rules the world. One of our great problems is that we have relegated imagination to various artsy ghettos, there to let it play. But imagination, including—especially including—artistic imagination, has to be understood as a practical science. It must govern everything, and if it is detached from the praxis of life and then uprooted, it goes off to the art museums to die. For

But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink.

Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace—that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth—every manifestation of it—and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The

The point of a true education is to, by the grace of God, learn how to refuse to let the soul get old.