Quotes from Peter Kreeft

Not all the truths of faith can be proved by reason, but all arguments against the truths of faith can be disproved by reason.

When you ask them what's wrong with the world, they never say there is not enough religion. They say there is not enough peace, prosperity, security, comfort, health care, or environmental responsibility. In other words, not enough human control over nature and human nature.

Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us).

When we use the prayers of the Church, we use the greatest prayers ever written, the words and sentiments of great saints and hymn writers and liturgists. We do this rightly, because God deserves the best, and these prayers are the best. They were composed by other people, but we make them our own when we pray them, like a lover reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare to his beloved. It is Shakespeare's gift: Shakespeare gave it to him, and now he gives it to his beloved.

the species or nature with which we make our choices is fallen, sinful, selfish, and stupid; and we cannot by our own power attain the deepest and final end of our desires, union with God, eternal happiness. Thus

God loves good men more than bad men, as He loves angels more than men

But God loves men more than angels in intensity, because He became one of us

So two things, on our part, are required to receive God's saving grace: repentance from sin and faith in God Who saves us (by grace, in Christ). Both are free choices, and both are necessary to allow grace to enter our souls.

God loves us more than we love Him.

Charity transcends mere virtue. Yet once this charity exists, it fulfills all virtue, as the New Law fulfills the Old and as grace fulfills nature. Charity is the heart and soul of all virtue.

life is a quest for love and a quest for god, and there is no car or plane for this trip. it is an old-fashioned quest made on our own two feet.

It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children.

If human life becomes cheapened, it becomes cheapened at both ends. Parents are killed, by euthanasia, when they become a "burden" to their children; and children are killed, by abortion, when they become a "burden" to their parents. All societies in history would regard these two sins as two of the most heartless and inhuman possible sins. To kill your parents is to kill yourself, your own past; and to kill your children is to kill yourself, your own future.

Third, it can mean deep, wondering reverence, or "awe" at something immeasurably superior. This is an emotion that is much rarer today than ever before in the history of the world, probably because modern life is so full of scientific knowledge and technological power over nature that we live in a dream of arrogant cleverness and a cocoon of predictable comforts.

God said it, that settles it.

To exercise what Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy called a right that is "at the heart of liberty"— namely, the right to determine for oneself the meaning of life and the mystery of human existence—is to tell God, "Get off my throne.

But we can influence (not compel) each other's choices through the mediating channels of imagination and emotion. So can angels. They can't put judgments in your mind or choices in your will, but they can put images in your imagination and feelings in your heart. (Feelings don't compel you either; your will can choose whether to follow your feelings or not.)

The perennial temptation is to creep under the angel's flaming sword, to try to create a heaven on earth.

The two most popular forms of this are the Oriental form of ignoring real physical evils by creating a mystical inner paradise through yoga and meditation

the Western form of ignoring real spiritual evils by building a technological heaven on earth. Both are doomed to failure

Love is strengthened and perfected by suffering. Couples who have had only ease lack depth. True love needs to suffer. "The course of true love never did run smooth." Kindness—mere kindness—cannot tolerate suffering. Love can.

Even saints do not smile sweetly when God throws them into mud puddles. Only pigs do that.

Earthly life is full of soporifics, anaesthetics, pain-dullers. In fact, compared with Purgatory our whole life on earth will appear to have been life only half awake. In Purgatory we will be fully awake, fully sensitive, and fully cognizant of the evil of all of our sins. Our clear knowledge of God's brightness and beauty will make our clear knowledge of our own darkness and ugliness more painful than any similar light that shows up our most terrible defects here on earth.

The root reason for this is the denial of the human essence, the human equality, the human family—judging people's worth only by how efficiently or intelligently or quickly they function. This is confusing the essence with the nonessential.