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Freedom is not the permission to do what you like. It's the power to do what you ought.

Os Guinness

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Os Guinness
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: September 30
Author
University Teacher
China
Freedom
Power
Like
Permission
Ought

More quotes by Os Guinness

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I live before the audience of One-before others I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to prove.
Os Guinness
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Too often we forget that the great men of faith reached the heights they did only by going through the depths.
Os Guinness
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One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing 'the world' of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world, you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world.
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We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere we are called to Someone.
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Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be.
Os Guinness
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God is the ultimate source of all power. All human power is therefore derived, limited, unstable and transient.
Os Guinness
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Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.
Os Guinness
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Christ is the only way to God, but there are as many ways to Christ as there are people who come to Him.
Os Guinness
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Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly.
Os Guinness
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In terms of distance, the prodigal's pigsty is the farthest point from home in terms of time, the pigsty is the shortest distance to the father's house.
Os Guinness
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The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.
Os Guinness
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In working out our callings, we are to perform for one audience, the audience of One.
Os Guinness
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Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.
Os Guinness
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If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt....There is no believing without some doubting, and believing is all the stronger for understanding and resolving doubt.
Os Guinness
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We human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us.
Os Guinness
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We may be in the dark about what God is *doing*, but we are not in the dark about God.
Os Guinness
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Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that secular people, losing touch with transcendence, would eventually lose a reference point from which to look down and judge themselves. In the end they would lose even the capacity to despise themselves. Thus, because of the 'death of God', they would confuse heaven with happiness, and happiness with health.
Os Guinness
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What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood.
Os Guinness
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In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
Os Guinness
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Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to break in the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed.
Os Guinness