Quotes from Peter Kreeft

It is often said that we live in a youth culture. It's a lie. We live in an old culture. We idolize youth because we are old. We are tired and bored. Ancient cultures respected the old because those cultures were young. They were not bored.

Modernism and Fundamentalism are popular—they are two quick and easy answers to a complex question.

From Socrates through Aquinas, reason meant primarily the understanding of the nature of reality, the knowledge of the essences of things.

Likewise the subjection of woman to man results from the perfection of the male and the imperfection of the female sex.

The second reason was to make public and visible an invisible spiritual reality. This is the purpose of all the sacraments. Indeed, it is the fundamental purpose of matter itself.

See C. S. Lewis' essay "Meditation in a Toolshed" for this crucial distinction.) The

Happiness can get boring, because it is the satisfaction of our desires, and we know what we desire. (Can you desire what you do not know?) Joy never gets boring because it transcends our desires and surprises them with gifts.

Even biologists rank species in a hierarchical order.

Hence man never desires infinite meat, or infinite drink. . . . But non-natural concupiscence is altogether infinite . . . Hence he that desires riches, may desire to be rich not up to a certain limit but to be simply as rich as possible (I-II,30,4).

Cicero famously said, you have no choice between having a philosophy and not having one, only between having a good one and having a bad one. And not to admit that you have a philosophy at all is to have a bad one. For it is one that does not know itself. So how could it know anything else, especially us?

And on earth, pain and pleasure are strangely akin at their peak, like death and life. When a thing is enormously beautiful, it hurts.

Doesn't certainty about a universal negative require omniscience? Don't you have to have knowledge of everywhere to know that there is no X anywhere?

It's just as dangerous and just as heretical to under—do as to over—do what Scripture says.

The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by God.

Many people disbelieve in angels because they disbelieve in spirit. They believe only matter exists.

Greed for the things money can buy ("natural wealth") is a bad thing, but it is finite. You can only enjoy a finite amount of food or drink, houses or cars, or even sex. But greed for money ("artificial wealth") is infinite. You can always want more. It's like a drug: you have to have higher and higher doses of it to give you the same "buzz" you used to get from little bits of it. And this never stops. It is Hell's false infinite.

the nature of a voluntary act, whose principle needs to be in itself;

manifests a good person, a good character, a good habit, and also because good deeds gradually form good habits, good character, good persons.

Our only qualification for God's grace is our emptiness, not our fullness; our undeservingness, not our deservingness. 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous but the sinners.' (Mk 2:17). Similarly, on an infinitely lower level, this book is for empty hearts, not full ones.

Each truth about God known by the mind is a new motive for loving Him with the will.

A habit is a stable disposition to act in a certain way, good or evil. Virtues are good habits; vices are bad habits.

That divine presence explains the joy the Jews felt so passionately when they went to their temple and which we find expressed in their Psalms. If we don't have as much joy in our churches as they had, it can only be because we don't have as much faith and love toward that divine presence as they had. And yet we have the presence of the same God in an even more complete and more concrete form in Christ, who is God incarnate, fully divine and fully human.

Divine love is not humanity but neighbor, the concrete, unique individual. You can only ever love individuals, because only individuals ever exist. Classes and collections are abstract objects of thought, not concretely real things. We group people into groups, but real people are concrete individuals.

It also works the other way around: the more you love any person (human or divine), the more you want to know him (or Him) better, and the more you do. And this always causes deep joy.