Top 90 Douglas Wilson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If boys don’t learn, men won’t know.”

— Douglas Wilson

2. “Immodest and attractive is easy. Modest and repulsive is easy too. But modest and attractive is an art form.”

— Douglas Wilson

3. “Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.”

— Douglas Wilson

4. “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

5. “There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.”

— Douglas Wilson

6. “Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.”

— Douglas Wilson

7. “Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility.”

— Douglas Wilson

8. “A great reformation and revival-it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements: gospel preaching and being eaten by lions, a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church.”

— Douglas Wilson

9. “Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly – ‘Did God say not to eat from any tree?’ In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.”

— Douglas Wilson

10. “I’m having the time of my life and I’m glad people are enjoy it.”

— Douglas Wilson

11. “Whether the Bible is Law or Gospel depends on the spiritual condition of the one hearing it. If someone is regenerate and loves God, then the whole Bible is Gospel to him. If someone is unregenerate and hates God, the whole Bible is Law to him, the whole thing condemns him.”

— Douglas Wilson

12. “Fatherlessness is a rot that is eating away at the modern soul.”

— Douglas Wilson

13. “How is it possible to live like a machine and bear fruit like a tree?”

— Douglas Wilson

14. “Husbands must, therefore, concentrate on being strong for the sake of their wives. Ungodly men are strong for selfish reasons, and not for the sake of others. A godly husband uses his strength to give to her; he does not use his strength to take from her.”

— Douglas Wilson

15. “Pace yourself in your reading. A little bit every day really adds up. If you read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do. It is far better to walk a mile a day than to run five miles every other month. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit.”

— Douglas Wilson

16. “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”

— Douglas Wilson

17. “Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.”

— Douglas Wilson

18. “We cannot pursue a classical and Christian education as a fad. We are not purchasing intellectual hula hoops for the kids.”

— Douglas Wilson

19. “Use plants to bring life.”

— Douglas Wilson

20. “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

21. “I see the same coffee table everywhere. It’s mass marketing.”

— Douglas Wilson

22. “God picks us up where we are, not where we should have been.”

— Douglas Wilson

23. “I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn’t worked.”

— Douglas Wilson

24. “I want to get the point across that you may not have money to give to a charity, whether that is Ronald McDonald House or Broadway Cares or DIFFA, but you can help RAISE money or give your time and talents.”

— Douglas Wilson

25. “He who walks with the wise will be wise, Scripture saith, and he who walks with the witty will eventually start to pop off himself.”

— Douglas Wilson

26. “Education is the process of selling someone on books.”

— Douglas Wilson

27. “The medievalist has the capacity, and the desire, to harmonize. He believes the planets sing in harmony; why cannot technology also sing?”

— Douglas Wilson

28. “The brain is not a shoebox that ‘gets full,’ but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know.”

— Douglas Wilson

29. “As you read, allow your reading to cluster around your interests.”

— Douglas Wilson

30. “To say that someone is a conservative does not tell us what he is interested in conserving.”

— Douglas Wilson

31. “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

32. “Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks.”

— Douglas Wilson

33. “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

34. “We’re able to influence younger generations on design and art. They might not have realized they were an artist.”

— Douglas Wilson

35. “Ripping up carpet is easy, tiling is the issue.”

— Douglas Wilson

36. “Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind.”

— Douglas Wilson

37. “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

38. “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

39. “One of the most pernicious errors that has gotten abroad in the Christian community is the error of sentimentalism – the view that evil is to be evaded, rather than the more robust Christian view that it is to be conquered. The Christian believes that evil is there to be fought, the dragon is there to be slain. The sentimentalist believes that evil is to be resented.”

— Douglas Wilson

40. “Sins are like grapes; they come in bunches.”

— Douglas Wilson

41. “For the people of God, the Word of God leaves pleasant bruises.”

— Douglas Wilson

42. “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

43. “Writing well is more than mechanics, but it is not less.”

— Douglas Wilson

44. “Honor must start in the heart, but if it ends there, it isn’t honor. Honor must be expressed through words, symbols, actions, or gestures. Honor is among the most incarnational of the virtues. It must have feet and hands.”

— Douglas Wilson

45. “I’m opinionated. I always stick to my design plan. I don’t waver.”

— Douglas Wilson

46. “The TSA must think we’re mushrooms. You know, the way they are trying to keep us in the dark, and the way they keep feeding us a fertilizing agent that comes from the south end of a north-bound cow.”

— Douglas Wilson

47. “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

48. “Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, be it known, o king, that we will not consent to applaud the use of a man as though he were a woman.”

— Douglas Wilson

49. “Most of what is shaping you in the course of your reading you will not be able to remember. The most formative years of my life were the first five, and if those years were to be evaluated on the basis of my ability to pass a test on them, the conclusion would be that nothing important happened then, which would be false. The fact that you can’t remember things doesn’t mean that you haven’t been shaped by them.”

— Douglas Wilson

50. “The point of a true education is to, by the grace of God, learn how to refuse to let the soul get old.”

— Douglas Wilson