Quotes from Peter Kreeft

why contraception is not only wrong but sacrilegious:

Tempting is not forcing.

When God changed someone's name in Scripture, He changed their destiny: Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter.

wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.)

Read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard commencement address on that one.)

The arrow of our souls flies to God as the target—unless the arrow is so badly bent that it flies backwards, in which case it pierces the eye of the archer and makes him blind as a Pharisee.

We see that the universe is full of all sorts of species. Every possible rung on the cosmic hierarchy is filled. There are no gaps. Below us there are intelligent animals, like apes, then less intelligent animals, like fish, then barely intelligent animals, like slugs and TV producers, then plants, then minerals.

Not all who listen, believe. If you call the Gospel a crazy fairy tale, a far-too-good-to-be-true myth, an insane extension of wishful thinking, or even a blasphemous lie, I will respect you and argue with you. But if you call it a platitude, I can only pity you, for that means you have never listened to it.

13. Moderation is dull. (Read G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday to refute that cliché.)

shows how fruitful analogies can be—not in proving points but in illustrating them, showing spiritual truths by means of material images.

No man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence about how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.

The purpose of arguing is not to win. Arguing is not a game. It's not, I'm cleverer than you are. The purpose of argument is like the purpose of science: to know. It's a means, not the only means, of knowing, of transferring us from ignorance to knowledge, a way of getting out of that cave. Philosophy is, in some obvious ways, not like what we today call science, but in some other less than obvious ways, it's very similar to what we today call science.

U svakom podru?ju života, tajna je originalnosti prestati pokušavati biti originalan i re?i istinu onako kako je vidiš.

Seek and you shall find" does not refer to anything else: long life, conquest of earthly enemies, freedom from pain, disease, death, betrayal, weakness, and so on. But it does refer to God and to that which God is: "God is agap?." That is why all who seek it find it. De Caussade says: "If you search for this kingdom where God alone rules, you can be quite sure you will find it" (p. 112).

these relativists turn out to be not relativistic at all about one thing: their relativism. That's their one nonnegotiable absolute.

The result of change cannot actually exist before the change.

Love works; and if we do not see the works of love (in places where they obviously ought to be) then we can be sure that love is not present.

we are participating in His actual work.

The changing thing begins with only the potential to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potential is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change.

As I said, relativism says there are no absolutes. Absolutely no absolutes.

Spirit means essentially two things: 1. The power of thinking—conscious, deliberate, rational understanding. Not sense perception; that's the work of a bodily organ, like the eye. 2. The power of willing and choosing and deliberately loving. Not sensory appetite; that's the work of a bodily function, like hunger.

It is an a fortiori argument: if even the veneration of a beloved father's relics after he dies is a good thing, how much more the veneration of a saint's?

As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet what it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it will actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state.

martyrdom is not only not the same as suicide, it is the polar opposite of suicide, since the suicide loves nothing in life enough to keep living, while the martyr loves something so much that he gives up everything for it, even life. The suicide sees less value and meaning in life than anyone else, while the martyr sees more.