Douglas Wilson Quotes

Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other.
The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists. ~ Douglas Wilson

Once young girls used to play with baby dolls, seeing themselves in the role of the nurturing mother; now they can be seen playing with Barbie dolls, seeing themselves in the place of the doll. And of course, the doll is both pretty and stacked. The pressure is on and stays on. ~ Douglas Wilson

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all. ~ Douglas Wilson

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let's call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers. ~ Douglas Wilson

To say that someone is a conservative does not tell us what he is interested in conserving. ~ Douglas Wilson

That's why moderns have to have hobbies. They can't find satisfaction in their money-earning work, so many seek creative satisfaction in model planes and trains. ~ Douglas Wilson

Collect and read dictionaries. Take a couple of minutes every day to read a page. Highlight fun words you didn't know before and write them down somewhere else. ~ Douglas Wilson

When the wrath of God is revealed in the world, it is revealed as God "lets go" of a culture, ~ Douglas Wilson

Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil. ~ Douglas Wilson

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him. ~ Douglas Wilson

I'm having the time of my life and I'm glad people are enjoy it. ~ Douglas Wilson

Violent overthrow of the revolution is revolutionary, and compromise with the revolution is revolutionary. ~ Douglas Wilson

They want to keep the government 'out of our bedrooms.' What are they talking about? I have to live in their society, remember. And I built my house, which means I built my own bedroom. The government told me how far apart the studs had to be in my bedroom wall, they dictated how thick the sheetrock had to be, they mandated how far apart the sheetrock screws had to be, they had policies on the configuration of those sheetrock screws, they have laws on the size of the windows and what kind of glass I can have in them, and there are stern legal warnings on the mattress tags. What do you mean, you want to keep the government out of our bedrooms? The president is probably contemplating, right this minute, the establishment of a bedroom czar. ~ Douglas Wilson

Organized labor is organized to take control of an asset away from its rightful owners without paying for it. Organized labor is organization of property by those who don't own it. Organized labor, by driving up the costs of production through coercive means, destroys industries. Organized labor is piracy without the boats and eye patches. Why would anybody want to celebrate organized labor? ~ Douglas Wilson

Pain concentrates the mind. Pain tethers you to this world, and the rope is a stout one. But at the same time, the grace of God enables you to look along the pain, to look down the entire length of the trial, and to see the purpose and point of it all. ~ Douglas Wilson

It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people. ~ Douglas Wilson

I enjoy talking to fans. ~ Douglas Wilson

Confession of sins is not meritorious: to confess sins as a way of placing God in your debt is not dealing with sin; it is committing another sin. The context of all confession must be the free grace of justification. ~ Douglas Wilson

And the heart of it is this. Real conversions are marked by the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit. Regeneration has a tell, and that tell is love. As John Owen noted, the gifts of the Spirit are not the saving grace of the Spirit.11 And the love we are talking about is not a momentary thing. Love is not a walk around the block, but rather a long-haul trucking trip. ~ Douglas Wilson

Inexpensive is good. ~ Douglas Wilson

Propaganda (things to be propagated) is inescapable. It is not *whether* certain values will be propagated, but rather, *which* values will be propagated. ~ Douglas Wilson

If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else ~ Douglas Wilson

Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person. ~ Douglas Wilson

This is why stories like this, with great evils in them, are necessary for children to read. Kids just got here - they are still figuring things out, and stories are one of the central realities that can help them. Chesterton says somewhere that stories about dragons and knights do not teach children to fear dragons. They had dragons under the bed already. They had the fear already. The stories actually teach children that dragons can be killed. And ~ Douglas Wilson

The carnival of carnage that takes place every day, month and year in the realm of industry; the thousands of useful lives that are annually sacrificed to the Moloch of greed; the blood tribute paid by labor to capitalism, brings forth no shout for vengeance and reparation; no tear, except from the family and friends of the victims. ~ D. Douglas Wilson

The church is in the world the way a ship is in the ocean, and that is the way it should be. But bad things start happening when the ocean gets into the ship. ~ Douglas Wilson

In two days, it's hard to to get the quality you would normally want for a design project. ~ Douglas Wilson

They weren't really looking for repentance; postmodern irony would do. When ~ Douglas Wilson

For some reason foreign to our modern ears, God tells us that celebration is central to pleasing Him; it is central to leading a good life. Modern American life has no time for serious celebrations as did life in centuries past. We've got work to do; projects and deadlines press us. And yet for all our industrial-strength pragmatism, few if any truly important things get accomplished. We have forgotten that celebration isn't just an option; it's a call to full Christian living.
Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating-whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking-are all part of obeying God's command to "love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength" (Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30). We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips. ~ Douglas Wilson

We need to make sure we are doing what Jesus said and not what we thought Jesus must have said. The textbook case against Christian activism can be made in one word - Prohibition - the word that would have made the Lord Jesus at Cana into a moonshiner felon. We did a great job there of setting aside the Word of God for the sake of our tradition ~ Douglas Wilson

His pastoral antennae were buzzing and sparking, and it seemed to him that he was inevitably going to be dragged into this swamp of charges and countercharges. And if so, he preferred going in headfirst and not grabbed at the heels by the swamp monster of circumstances in order to be dragged helplessly into these stagnant ponds of punk water. He was just doing his duty, but his duty seemed a lot bigger than normal. ~ Douglas Wilson

Attaching "produced at Berkeley, Harvard, MIT" to a ridiculous argument immediately makes it cogent to many. That's part of life, but let's not pretend that it's rationality. ~ Douglas Wilson

You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate. ~ Douglas Wilson

Reformers must remember always that religion shapes culture, and culture trumps politics. ~ Douglas Wilson

Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda. ~ Douglas Wilson

If you keep the law of God, you are not described in Scripture as a pinched legalist, but rather as happy (Prov. 29:18). ~ Douglas Wilson

God is an ironist. He folds the story up in unexpected ways, tying things together that we could never have imagined. He is the ironist of time, of history, of story. He, in possession of ultimate right-handed power, determined to set it all aside, and overcame evil by taking on an invincible vulnerability, inviting us to learn how to do the same. He is not just strong, but also wise in the authority of humility. And He is love, which means He overflows in sacrificial ways. But His sacrifices are not throwaways, but always come back to Him thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Love is fruitful, and in imitation of Him we begin to learn that the more we give, the more we have. ~ Douglas Wilson

The reign of Christ has been established. The nations who object to this settlement trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon. ~ Douglas Wilson

We live in a narcissistic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having read, without the antecedent labor of actually reading. ~ Douglas Wilson

Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself. ~ Douglas Wilson

Ripping up carpet is easy, tiling is the issue. ~ Douglas Wilson

Designing is a lot like a high-wire act - if the tightrope walker is only six inches off the ground, where's the excitement? ~ Douglas Wilson

we have somehow assumed that the interests of speed, or some other function of athletic performance, somehow set aside the requirements of propriety and modesty. In the ancient world, athletes competed naked, and in the modern world, in some events, they might as well be. ~ Douglas Wilson

In Scripture, doctrine is practical and high doctrine is highly practical. Those who disparage doctrine for the sake of practice are impractical. Those who disparage practice for the sake of doctrine are unskilled in the word of righteousness. We are never to put apart what God has joined together. ~ Douglas Wilson

You don't have the right to be left alone with that abortion decision. The child is present ... you are not alone. ~ Douglas Wilson

You have to put your own personality into your home. Do what you feel is you! ~ Douglas Wilson

They always wanted to do it for the children. But they never do, turns out, and the children go home crying, not having received the candy they were promised. ~ Douglas Wilson

We are like fruitflies, measuring everything in terms of our own lifespan. But since our lifespans are so short, our perspective is entirely wrong.
God, who inhabits eternity, sees things differently. He knows that our lives are just a mist. We should trust Him. It was not that long ago that Jesus came and it will not be that long before He returns. ~ Douglas Wilson

And so it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a teenager to enter the kingdom of heaven listening to the Dave Matthews Band. ~ Douglas Wilson

What people respond to in my room makeovers is the daring design - fearless colors, bold fabrics and occasionally outlandish decor. ~ Douglas Wilson

Your deep interests should always have a dog-eared place on your nightstand. ~ Douglas Wilson

The trick is to state what we know in a recognizable fashion but in a way that is slightly off, in a way that arrests us. ~ Douglas Wilson

If God doesn't want us to do it, He doesn't want us to get pleasure from thinking about doing it ~ Douglas Wilson

People who insist upon dressing casually also want to think casually. And in a fallen world, thinking casually means being wrong more often than not. ~ Douglas Wilson

Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This is why individual heart transformation, not legislation, is fundamental to national reformation. The person and work of Jesus is not optional. ~ Douglas Wilson

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of
Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions. ~ Douglas Wilson

I was supposed to be the antithesis of Frank. ~ Douglas Wilson

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed. ~ Douglas Wilson

If all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time. The ~ Douglas Wilson

I'm very flattered, but I don't think I'm the sexiest man on the planet. ~ Douglas Wilson

Leftism is that impulse that wants to establish coercion and call it community. Apply ~ Douglas Wilson

I have wanted to "make books" since around the sixth grade, and I published my first book when I was in my late thirties. My point is that the time in between was not wasted - submarine service, marriage, college, bringing up three kids, starting a school for them, and so forth. This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say. ~ Douglas Wilson

A challenge always is good. Normal design does not come under the constraints of a small budget and time frame. But it has helped me to make quick and knowledgeable decisions. ~ Douglas Wilson

I gave the couple a hint of a design that would work great with the bones of their home. They weren't ready for it, and they embarrassed themselves and that's too bad. ~ Douglas Wilson

Christian equality can be described as equity, or even-handedness. Egalitarianism, in contrast, demands sameness, or equality of outcome. These two visions of equality are about as comparable as dry and wet. Think of it in terms of ten teenage boys trying to dunk a basketball: equity means that they all face the same ten-foot standard, and only two them them can do it - equity thus usually means differences in outcome. Egalitarianism wants equality of outcome, and there is only one way to get that - lower the net. Sameness of outcome requires differences in the standards. ~ Douglas Wilson

Fortunately, given the state of criticism these days, lots of people miss - especially the feminists, who usually throw like a girl. ~ Douglas Wilson

Offensive Takeaway Point: We should look for a way to stop responding to initiatives of the adversary and start behaving in such a way that they have to figure out how to respond to us. Take the initiative. ~ Douglas Wilson

If it does not come at the last to gladness, then to hell with it. ~ Douglas Wilson

For the people of God, the Word of God leaves pleasant bruises. ~ Douglas Wilson

God is not an actor within the larger scheme of things. He is not a muscle-bound Jupiter, bullying the littler ones. He is the Author of the whole thing. We never ask how much of Hamlet's role was contributed by Hamlet, and how much by Shakespeare. That is not a question that can be answered with 70/30 or 50/50 or 90/10. The right answer is 100/100. Hamlet's actions are all Hamlet's and they are all Shakespeare's. Douglas Wilson ~ Douglas Wilson

Without a shared hermeneutic, authority is meaningless. ~ Douglas Wilson

There are lighter colors of granite and I like to break the rules. ~ Douglas Wilson

I've made an incredible amount of money stealing fans from homeowners. ~ Douglas Wilson

Allusion is lovely, and experience with other forms of writing brings the ability to use that device pervasively. This in turn sets high expectations for the reader- in that you are expecting him to pick up on it- and this is a way of respecting your readers. And when you respect your readers, they will come to respect you. ~ Douglas Wilson

Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen of them, to give him an 87 percent. But we go far beyond this. A student writes an essay on a sunset, let us say, and the teacher writes 87 percent at the top of that paper. What he is saying, in effect, is that there is a mathematical metaphor operative here. The figure of 87 is to 100 what this submitted essay is ... to what? What on earth is this supposed to mean? ~ Douglas Wilson

But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink. ~ Douglas Wilson

The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing? ~ Douglas Wilson

Without the new birth, all the doctrinal and liturgical work in the world is just the reorganization of dead materials, instead of what it is described in the Bible as being, which is the organization and discipleship of living materials. ~ Douglas Wilson

Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called "hate crimes" legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed. ~ Douglas Wilson

It's a character I've created. Actually, that's pretty much the opposite of me, off a farm in the Midwest. ~ Douglas Wilson

Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace - that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth - every manifestation of it - and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The ~ Douglas Wilson

If there are weeds in my garden, I have a problem. But it does not lead me to question the existence of lettuce. ~ Douglas Wilson

There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013. ~ Douglas Wilson

One of our great problems today is that we have gotten caught up in our culture-wide quest for authenticity. We want our jeans authentic (pre-ripped at the factory), we want our apples authentic (grown locally instead of somewhere else), we want our music authentic (underground bands nobody ever heard of), we want our lettuce authentic (organically manured), we want our literature authentic (full of angst), we want our movies authentic (subtitles), and we want our coffee tables authentic (purchased from a genuine peasant while we were on some eco-tour). In short, we are a bunch of phonies. We are superficial all the way down. ~ Douglas Wilson

I believe firmly in plodding. Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one-hundred-yard dashing. Doing a little bit now is far better than hoping to do a lot on the morrow. So redeem the fifteen minute spaces. Chip away at it. ~ Douglas Wilson

One of the staples of discussion about basic aesthetic principles is that art has to exist for its own self and cannot be prostituted to advance any particular cause or point of view. Perfect nonsense, of course, but that doesn't keep it from being repeated ad nauseam. ~ Douglas Wilson

Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks. ~ Douglas Wilson

The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht. ~ Douglas Wilson

The State is not the hope of the world; it is an institution grounded in the threat of violence, whether via capital punishments or petty bureaucratic intrusions. ~ Douglas Wilson

Whether it was working on theatre sets or stage lighting, I didn't realize most all of the skills I was exposed to were going to come in handy later on when I became a designer. ~ Douglas Wilson

Education is the process of selling someone on books. ~ Douglas Wilson

Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry. ~ Douglas Wilson

Criticism should be received as a kindness (Ps. 141:5). ~ Douglas Wilson

Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, and our political sins are not exempt from this salvation. Why would our political sins (which frequently have been among our foulest sins) be excluded? Jesus ~ Douglas Wilson

Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out. ~ Douglas Wilson

Sins are like grapes; they come in bunches. ~ Douglas Wilson

Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary. ~ Douglas Wilson

We must also consider the nature of prayer. It is curious that Christians are pushing so strenuously for prayer which they don't believe to he prayer. Christians pray to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ-not to Allah, Krishna, or God-as-you-conceive-him/her-tobe. If we were successful in establishing Christian prayer in the
schools, we would be violating the religious liberties of those who are not Christians. If we establish prayer that is not Christian, what have we gained? Why fight to get prayer in the schools when you believe the prayers, once instituted, won't get past the ceiling? Do we really want our children led in a daily vain repetition? ~ Douglas Wilson

Modern evangelicals like to compare holy things to soft drinks, designer clothes, [and other products in] our modern consumerist culture. The problem with this is not ... the comparison to a created thing. The problem is that it is ... bad poetry. The Bible compares God to very mundane things, but does so with poetic wonder. God shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. ~ Douglas Wilson

God could have made every creature just exactly the same, all of us round and shiny like little ball bearings one centimeter across, with all the invisible serial numbers distinguishing us one from another hidden away in the decrees and secret counsels of God. And there we would all be, pretty much all of us really bored. But what He actually did was make the gaudiest show ever, which started at the beginning of our story when Adam looked at Eve for the first time and, as already noted, started speaking poetry. ~ Douglas Wilson