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Ethics without virtue is an illusion. What is the highest purpose of ethics? It is to make a person good, that is virtuous.

Peter Kreeft

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Peter Kreeft
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: March 16
Philosopher
Professor
Theologian
Writer
Paterson
New Jersey
Peter John Kreeft
Make
Ethics
Good
Illusion
Highest
Virtue
Purpose
Persons
Person
Piety
Without
Virtuous

More quotes by Peter Kreeft

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Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying I wish I had watched more TV instead.'
Peter Kreeft
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Atheists in C.S. Lewis' day were as snobbish and arrogant as they are now, but better educated and more capable of debate.
Peter Kreeft
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God created the possibility of evil people actualized that potentiality. The source of evil is not God's power but mankind's freedom. Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning.
Peter Kreeft
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The more we realize we are loved, the more ashamed we are not to love back. The more we sin as a violation of love, not just of law, the more powerful a motive we will have to overcome it. For sin is attractive to us (otherwise we would never be attracted to it) and can be cast out only by something more attractive.
Peter Kreeft
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We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name Jesus means: 'God saves'.
Peter Kreeft
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Indifference is the only road that never gets to God.
Peter Kreeft
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Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does
Peter Kreeft
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Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts.
Peter Kreeft
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A man walking through a wall is a miracle. A man both walking and not walking through a wall at the same time and in the same respect is a contradiction. God can perform miracles but not contradictions - not because his power is limited, but because contradictions are meaningless.
Peter Kreeft
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For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.
Peter Kreeft
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Love is faith's flower, hope is its stem. Grace comes into us by faith, like water through the roots of a tree. It rises in us by hope, like sap rising through the trunk of a tree. And it matures in us by [love] as fruit matures on a tree's branches, fruit for the neighbor's eating.
Peter Kreeft
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Humility is the marriage bond of Heaven. Pride is the frigidity of Hell.
Peter Kreeft
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All human beings have a right to life. Our unborn children are members of the human race. They're human beings, so they have a right to life.
Peter Kreeft
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Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.
Peter Kreeft
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We do not do good works to get into heaven we do good works because heaven has gotten to us.
Peter Kreeft
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Every blade of grass is a blade of grace, a grace note in God's single Song. Nature is not blind and dumb. Nature is eloquent. Human science is blind and dumb if it does not hear this eloquence.
Peter Kreeft
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We need to have the mind of a conservative and the heart of a liberal.
Peter Kreeft
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Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.
Peter Kreeft
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One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
Peter Kreeft
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We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it’s worth it, that it pays.
Peter Kreeft