I fill up my quote file randomly, with what happens to come
across my path on a given day. But recent additions have leaned toward the
Social Sphere—Civilization and how to get there. Or maybe it's that, as we've known all along, the political, economic, and social spheres are interrelated, and you don't get freedom and prosperity if you sink from civilization into savagery. So it's wise to emphasize civilization.
The Social Sphere--or Civilization Sphere |
So here are some of my recent additions to the file:
There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue.
If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth
and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must
dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left.
We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His
transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is
true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought.
That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the
grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the
life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies
around us.—Ravi Zacharias, “The Soul of America,” 7-2-2016
The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state,
but from the hand of God.
—John F Kennedy
The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a
nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven
itself has ordained.—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30 1789
"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the
overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that
of all about me seemed insufficient for that day." Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks edited by
Michael Burlingame (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 210.
I feel a strong desire to tell
you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors
is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the
world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of
time thinking about which is the worse. You see why of course? He relies on
your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite
one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go
straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with
either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity
The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the
people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect
religious values from government tyranny.—Ronald Reagan
Happiness, whether in despotism or
democracy, whether in slavery or liberty, can never be found without
virtue.—John Adams
All
the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make or invent or
contrive principles. He can only discover them, and he ought to look through
the discovery to the Author.—Thomas Paine
Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an
American way of life.—Dwight D. Eisenhower
"[N]o
wall of words, [and] no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against
the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the
sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."—George Washington
(1789)
Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and
Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into
A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes,
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”—Martin
Luther King, Jr. (quoting 19th Century abolitionist Theodore Parker)
This is still
God’s world. The forces of evil, working through some mortals, have made a mess
of a good part of it. But it is still God’s world. In due time, when each of us
has had a chance to prove ourselves—including whether or not we are going to
stand up for freedom—God will interject himself, and the final and eternal
victory shall be for free agency.
And then shall
those complacent people on the sidelines, and those who took the wrong but
temporarily popular course, lament their decisions.
To the
patriots I say this: Take that long eternal look.
Stand up for
freedom, no matter what the cost. Stand up and be counted. It can help to save
your soul—and maybe your country.—Ezra Taft Benson
“No people will tamely surrender
their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and
Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, 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
"This is our vision. This is our mission.
But we can only get there together.
We are one people, with one destiny.
We all bleed the same blood.
We all salute the same great American flag.
And we are all made by the same God.
And when we fulfill this vision; when we celebrate our
250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new
chapter of American Greatness began."—President Donald Trump (first speech
to Congress 2-28-2017)
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