“Worldliness is what any particular culture does to make sin look normal and righteousness look strange.”
— David Wells, American missionary
“A Christian is not ruined by living in the world, but by the world living in him.”
— Anonymous
*“All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English philosopher
“Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil.”
— Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 106
“Our way is one of radical combat against depravity, and America is the original root of depravity.”
— 1985 communiqué from terrorist group Hezbollah
“Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong.”
— V. Gene Robinson, first same-sex Episcopal bishop (2004)
“I think it’s just the loss of family values. It’s the narcissism of our age, of people thinking only of themselves – not even of their family. When you lose those values of morality, you suddenly have no footing. And I think that’s when these people think there’s no problem with doing evil.”
— Los Angeles prosecutor David Conn (2004)
“Goodness is, so to speak, itself; badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.”
— C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and Christian thinker, in “Mere Christianity”
*“Young men and women are being enticed to think of themselves as two selves, one that is mind and reason in the classroom and another self, ‘after hours,’ that is all body and passion. They begin to imagine-though few entirely believe it-that they can use (that is, abuse) their bodies as they please for pleasure, and that choosing to do so has nothing to do with their academic studies or future lives. In reality they are following a formula for self-disintegration and failure.”
— Vigen Guorian, Loyola University professor
“Bodily pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. But when it is exalted to a necessity and we become dependent upon it, then we are slaves of our body and its feelings. Only misery lies ahead.”
— Dallas Willard, USC philosophy professor, Renovation of the Heart, p. 173
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton (1834-1902), British Baron and historian
“When people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders.”
— Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Founding Father
“Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.”
— Renata Adler (b. 1938), American writer/professor
“The world is a dangerous place to live — not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
— Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist
“The heart wants what it wants.”
— Film producer Woody Allen in 1992, explaining why he ran off with his longtime lover’s daughter, with whom he later had 2 children
“The gods had given me almost everything but I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease . . . tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search of new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the rooftop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), secular Irish poet, dramatist and critic
“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
— Voltaire (1694-1778), French Enlightenment deist philosopher and writer
“To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.”
— Seneca (4BC-65AD), Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist
“The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.”
— Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904), attorney and writer
“I don’t care what You said, I’ll do what I want.” It is God’s would be murderer. Sin would un-God God if it could. Sin defiles the conscience. Sin is irrational and forfeits blessing. Sin is painful–it hurts. Sin is damning. Sin is degrading it mares the image of God and man. Like Samson, it cuts the locks of purity and leaves men morally weak. Sin poisons the springs of love and turns beauty in leprosy. Sin defeats the mind, the heart, the will, the affections and it has made a whole world of people-all of mankind- children wrath by nature; objects of God’s wrath. Sin brings man under the domination of Satan and his sick sin system, which he controls. Man and the world is a slave to sin, open rebellion and defiance to God and a slave to Satan.”
— Unknown
“To pretend to pay homage to God and intend only the advantage of self is, rather, to mock Him than worship Him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied than God glorified, we set God below ourselves. Imagine, that He should submit His own honor to our advantage — we make our selves more glorious than God.”
— Stephen Charnock (1628-1680), English Puritan/Presbyterian pastor