Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft (born March 16 1937) is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. He is a regular contributor to several Christian publications and is the author of over 45 books.

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• Actually, we have misdefined "hypocrisy." Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda.
  • "The Pillars of Unbelief," National Catholic Register Jan-Feb 1988

• Love unifies by individuating and individuates by unifying. At what moment do lovers come into the most perfect possession of themselves as individuals if not when they are most lost in each other? Self, is given up, but "he who loses his self will find it." [Matthew 16:25]
  • Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven … But Never Dreamed of Asking (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 74

• The first existentialist was not Sartre, though he coined the term. Nor was it Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, though most of the textbooks say so. Nor was it even Pascal, though he foreshadowed half of Kierkegaard and was the first to write about the fundamental existential experience of cosmic anxiety and meaninglessness. It was not even Saint Augustine, whose Confessions stands out as the profoundest example of depth psychology and existential autobiography ever written. It was not even Socrates, who alone among philosophers totally existed his philosophy.
  Rather, the first existentialist was Solomon, or whoever wrote Ecclesiastes.
  • Three Philosophies of Life: Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity, Job: Life as Suffering, Song of Songs: Life as Love (1990), p. 18

• At exactly the time when the fatal knowledge of how to destroy the entire human race has fallen forever into our hands, the knowledge of morality has fallen out.
  • Back to Virtue (1992), p. 20

• “Humility is thinking less about yourself, not thinking less of yourself.”
  • Back to Virtue (1992), p. 100

• … condoms are about as effective against AIDS as a twenty-four-chamber gun instead of a six-chamber gun when playing Russian roulette.
  • Ecumenical Jihad, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996)

• Christ's divinity and lordship over one's life is the distinctive, essential faith of Christians: no non-Christian believes that (if he did, he would be a Christian), and all Christians believe it (if they do not, they are not Christians).
  • Prayer for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 55

• [Kreeft calls the word 'interesting':] "that all-purpose meaningless euphemism."
  • P. 9

• Those who love Tolkien are almost always good people, honest people. Some are Hobbit-like and some are Elvish, but none are Orcish. Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.

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Peter Kreeft