Francis Schaeffer famous quotes

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Biblical #Compassion #World

We must not only be True. We must be Beautiful.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Beautiful #Being True

I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Insanity #Insane #Answers

Truth always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Demand #Action #Reflexes

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Real #Mean #Men

The beginning of men's rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Heart #Men #Rebellion

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Rome #Judging

He who loses the arts loses the culture.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Art #Culture

Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Men #Intellectual #Mind

I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run, is a more deadly poison than straightforward persecution.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Running #Atheist #Believe

We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Government #Views #World

Thank God for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with God himself.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#God #Communication #Reality

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Mean #People #Needs

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#People #Conservative #Injustice

If there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Judging

As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the Lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the Lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Art #Taken

Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Responsibility #Church #Generations

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Demand #Confrontation

This is not an age in which to be a soft Christian.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Age #Christianity

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Art #Thinking #Works Of Art

Isolating the student from large sections of human knowledge is not the basis of a Christian education. Rather it is giving him or her the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator's existence and in the Bible's teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Teaching #Giving

The soul is not more important than the body. God made the whole man and the whole man is important.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Men #Soul #Important

In the flesh rather than the work of the Spirit, it is easy to say we are showing holiness and it only be egotistic pride and hardness.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Pride #Spirit #Easy

Jesus taught that the mark of the Christian is the observable love shown among all true believers.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Jesus #Believer

To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at those points where there is a cost in our doing so, is to push the next generation in the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Generations #Cost #Next

Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Art #Self

We must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Stress #Mind #Scripture

In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Art #World

The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Country #Government

How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Art #Artist #Should

Sometimes the greatest deterrent to a great marriage is believing you have a perfect marriage.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Believe #Perfect #Sometimes

Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Rooms #Faces #Answers

In two areas above all others the Christian demonstration of love and communication stands clear: in the area of the Christian couple and their children; and in the personal relationships of Christians in the church. If there is no demonstration in these two places, on the personal level, the world can conclude that orthodox Christian doctrine is nothing but dead, cold words.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#God #Christian #Children

This equation of the impersonal plus time plus chance producing the total configuration of the universe and all that is in it, modern people hold by faith.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#People #Chance #Modern

Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Children #People #Way

Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose - to be in relationship to God, who is there. Man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Mean #Men #Purpose

We should not view men with a cynical eye, seeing them only as meaningless products of chance, but, on the other hand, we should not go to the opposite extreme of seeing them romantically. To do either is to fail to understand who men really are--creatures made in the image of God but fallen.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Eye #Men #Views

Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Years #Church #World

You must not lose confidence in God because you lost confidence in your pastor. If our confidence in God had to depend upon our confidence in any human person, we would be on shifting sand.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#God #Would Be #Shifting

If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Real #Made #God Exists

The great distinction of a true Christian is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. How careful should he be, lest anything in his thoughts or feelings would be offensive to the Divine Guest.!
-- Francis Schaeffer

#God #Christian #Feelings

The ordinary Christian with the Bible in his hand can say that the majority is wrong.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Hands #Majority

Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Answers #Christianity

The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Stars #Imagination

I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Our Generation #Generations #Sin

If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Men #Christianity #Intellect

A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity.
-- Francis Schaeffer

#Christian #Home #Responsibility