All Quotes By: David Dark

"I suspect there's something a little demonic in finding others boring or unworthy of our interest."

"No so-called friendship that required the denying of another friendship could be worthy of the name, and any joy that required the exclusion of a peer would be forever illegitimate."

"...humans whipped into a frenzy of what they take to be righteous indignation (whether by waves of nationalism, party politics, or talk radio) often have an unfortunate habit of crucifying people."

" 'He died for me' is a moving phrase, but it's often also one way of drowning out the example of the life Jesus lived and the question of whether or not we dare to apply it to the way we conduct our own lives."

"There is a righteousness that transcends our percieved self-interest, and we get to pursue it in the hope that a better self-interest (not necessarily pragmatically verifiable) will follow. We get to live in hope of a better health than we're currently defending at all costs, including, perhaps, the forfeiture of our souls."

"it's always useful to keep in mind the difference between pessimism and realism in the service of truthfulness. There is a disillusionment that revels in self-satisfied navel-gazing and the insistence that there is no warmth or comfort to be found, but there's another kind (often mistaken for cynicism) that is merely holding out for the real thing."

"the Through-A-Glass-Darkly clause (dare to do our duty as we understand it) that marks all careful speech is witnessed in Lincoln's admonition that we can only speak, see, and understand fallibly. A determined awareness of our deficient imaginations will mark all talk of God, evil, freedom, and necessity (a difficult temptation in an election year), but if a nation or its leaders are to resist the drive to consider godlikeness as something to be grasped, this confession must never be cast aside."

"One peculiarity of the present age is that, in some cases, our powers of application are so compromised that we're incapable of recognizing as morally edifying anything that doesn't advertise itself as such."