The Magna Carta of Humanity Quotes

“Each human person is precious and unique. Each has dignity and worth that is inalienable and must be respected. Each must be valued, not because they are a member of the species Homo sapiens, but as an individual person in their own right.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Any and all recognition of freedom means recognizing the integrity of the equal freedom of others.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“America cannot endure permanently half 1776 and half 1789. The compromises, contradictions, hypocrisies, inequities, and evils have built up unaddressed. The grapes of wrath have ripened again, and the choice before America is plain. Either America goes forward best by going back first, or America is about to reap a future in which the worst will once again be the corruption of the best.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The Genesis declaration carries the central truth that each human person is a precious individual, whether strong or weak, rich or poor, able-bodied or handicapped, intellectually brilliant or limited, beautiful or plain.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Privilege is simply the target the progressive left paints on the back of those whose power they want.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The world finds itself torn between the two great bookends of human history, authoritarianism and anarchy. Authoritarianism is the world of order and stability without freedom...Anarchy, on the other hand, is the world of freedom without order and stability...The present challenge is to establish genuine personal freedom and substantially free societies in a generation that pays lip service to freedom while all the time it is pulled toward one or the other of the extremes.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“As Rabbi Sacks explains, if God is sovereign and all of life is viewed and lived under God, then two things follow. First, “all human power is delegated, limited, subject to moral constraints.”11 Second, “this has nothing to do with political structures (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy—Jews have tried them all) and everything to do with collective moral responsibility. . . . God has given us freedom; it is for us to use it to create a just, generous, gracious society. God does not do it for us but He teaches us how it is done. As Moses said: The choice is ours.”12”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Appreciation for history is scarce today, public debate is only rarely lit by foundational principles, and there is a further reason why the needed discussion fails to get off the ground—especially in the speech code, cancel culture of many American and European universities. Debate is often ended by prejudice and a fashionable consensus that chokes it off from the start.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The deepest division is between two mutually exclusive views of America: those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of 1776 and the American Revolution, and those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of 1789 and the French Revolution and its ideological heirs. Such current movements as postmodernism, political correctness, tribal and identity politics, the sexual revolution, critical theory (or grievance studies), and socialism all come down from 1789 and have nothing to do with the ideas of 1776. These movements and”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Every child has the right to be a complete surprise to its parents.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Freedom means and requires responsibility, but the responsibility of freedom can be a burden and even cause suffering. At some point, down in the dark labyrinths where we humans rationalize our evasions of responsibility, things become twisted. People who desire to evade responsibility get to the point where there appears to be tyranny in freedom, because of its responsibility, and freedom in tyranny, because there is no responsibility required, only dependency. The result grows into a fear of freedom that ends in a desire for freedom from freedom.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Freedom is so elemental to human life that it is not surprising that the irony of freedom is itself elemental. The great paradox of freedom is that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom. No one and nothing enslaves free people as much as they enslave themselves.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Postmodernism provides another popular alibi for bowing to the idol of freedom. God is dead, and truth is dead, it claims, so the ultimate determinant in society is power. But if all relations are negotiated solely by power, the best protection against the unwanted power of others is to approach everyone with suspicion (the infamous “hermeneutics of suspicion”). The outcome is an aging society fueled by pervasive suspicion, mistrust, rumor, conspiracy theories, and cynicism.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The people of God are to be an anti-Egypt, an anti-Babylon, and counterculture to all the cultures from the Greeks to the Romans to the Spanish, the French, the British, the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese. Called to be countercultural, it is a travesty when the people of God become the holy oil sprinkled on the status quo, the religious rationale for bolstering cultures under stress and a vile travesty if ever they become flowers on the chains that oppress.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Whatever people may feel about themselves, however humans may treat their fellow humans, and whichever human view of humanity may be dominant in one generation or another, or one society or another, God has made his position clear. He has created human beings in his image, and each one must therefore be seen and treated as unique, precious and the bearer of dignity and worth that is inalienable. It is quite wrong to think that special means speciesism. Even if a person is poor, uneducated, disabled, or mentally impaired, he or she is still created in the image of God and therefore precious and unique. Each individual human is exceptional. None is ever expendable. Made in the image of God, every single human person is special, singular, and significant.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Whatever people may feel about themselves, however humans may treat their fellow humans, and whichever human view of humanity may be dominant in one generation or another, or one society or another, God has made his position clear. He has created human beings in his image, and each one must therefore be seen and treated as unique, precious and the bearer of dignity and worth that is inalienable.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The Lord who is “I am who I am” and “I will be who I will be” is not mocked. God respects our freedom—even to reject him. But God is no less central, essential, and inescapable when he is rejected than when he reveals himself in the full reality of his presence.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Almost nothing is more elusive and controversial than the challenge of balancing equality and liberty. Societies claiming to be both free and just should strive for both ideals, but knowing how to balance them is the fly in the ointment. For liberty often threatens equality, just as equality often threatens liberty, and too much inequality from too much liberty may threaten liberty just as much as too much equality without liberty does too.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“All who desire to confront the wrongs of the world must begin by acknowledging the deceptiveness of their own human hearts, our own as well as those of others.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“The phenomenon of Western secularism is unique in history but its leading cause is its revulsion against corrupt and oppressive state churches in Europe. Secularism stands as a parasite on the best of Christian beliefs and a protest against the worst of Christian behavior.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Schooling in the art of freedom is not a luxury but a necessity. Civic education is essential for a free society. By ignoring the responsibility to hand on freedom, many Western societies are failing badly over the challenge of passing on the torch of freedom.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“Is it still possible in the advanced modern world to build societies with both freedom and order at the same time? To build and sustain communities and nations that demonstrate the highest values of human dignity, freedom, justice, equality, compassion, peace, and stability?”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom