Mark Acker > Mark's Quotes

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”
― Philippa Boyens

“Christianity in the West has for so long assumed that it has everything to give and nothing to learn. We have taken the role again and again of teacher and preacher. We have talked loud and often, seeking to control the conversation, and manipulate the discussion to our own ends. It’s time for us to take a seat in the classroom, to pull up a chair at the table, and listen.”
― Bryan Berghoef, Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation, and God

“I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”
― Peter Jackson

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”
― Abraham Maslow

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Although the word 'economy' may bring the term money to the minds of many, the truth is that for the whole of society money is nothing more than an artificial instrument that allows real things to be done, otherwise , the government could make us all rich simply by printing more bills. It is not money but the volume of goods and services that determines whether a country is poor or prosperous.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”
― Abraham Lincoln