Top 90 Douglas Wilson Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Being in the design industry, I’ve tended to meet more people who are affected by HIV and AIDS.”

— Douglas Wilson

53. “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

54. “Information can get from a professors lecture notes and into a student’s notebook without passing through the mind of either.”

— Douglas Wilson

55. “I’ve had rooms that didn’t come out to my liking.”

— Douglas Wilson

56. “To reject Christ because the church has sin of this sort in it is like rejecting hospitals because they are full of sick people.”

— Douglas Wilson

57. “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

58. “I’ve made an incredible amount of money stealing fans from homeowners.”

— Douglas Wilson

59. “I’m very flattered, but I don’t think I’m the sexiest man on the planet.”

— Douglas Wilson

60. “What people respond to in my room makeovers is the daring design – fearless colors, bold fabrics and occasionally outlandish decor.”

— Douglas Wilson

61. “Your writing advances a particular view of the world. Pretending that it does’t just confuses everybody, starting with you.”

— Douglas Wilson

62. “Blaming public Christians for being ‘too political’ is like blaming Noah’s ark for being ’too wet.”

— Douglas Wilson

63. “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

64. “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

65. “Plod diligently. Plodding generally goes in the same direction, while pottering doesn’t.”

— Douglas Wilson

66. “We confess that Jesus is Lord. He is not simply Lord of a spiritual zone somewhere, but He is Lord of the nations.”

— Douglas Wilson

67. “Reformers must remember always that religion shapes culture, and culture trumps politics.”

— Douglas Wilson

68. “Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This.”

— Douglas Wilson

69. “One of the most important things we can learn from Scripture is how to see ourselves accurately in the story in which we find ourselves. What story is God telling, and how does it concern us?”

— Douglas Wilson

70. “We sometimes do not appreciate the magnitude of the problem here. How could the eternal Word of the eternal Father take on limits? How can infinitude and finitude marry? The doctrine of the Incarnation proclaims frankly and without embarrassment the most stupendous miracle that can be imagined. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity.”

— Douglas Wilson

71. “In a world of spiritual eunuchs, it is good to find a man who is more than simply male.”

— Douglas Wilson

72. “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

73. “It’s a character I’ve created. Actually, that’s pretty much the opposite of me, off a farm in the Midwest.”

— Douglas Wilson

74. “Yeah, I spent about 20 years in a dorm room. It took me a while to graduate.”

— Douglas Wilson

75. “Your deep interests should always have a dog-eared place on your nightstand.”

— Douglas Wilson

76. “I am the young, edgy New Yorker.”

— Douglas Wilson

77. “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

78. “Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary.”

— Douglas Wilson

79. “Unbelief squashes; faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside, and tells him that this part of what he did was good, while that other part of what he did got in the way. “And this is how to do it better next time.”

— Douglas Wilson

80. “If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else.”

— Douglas Wilson

81. “Disagreements about things like the necessity of Christian education are actually disagreements about the nature of knowledge, the meaning of common grace, the authority of natural revelation, and the possibility of neutrality in education.”

— Douglas Wilson

82. “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

83. “If it does not come at the last to gladness, then to hell with it.”

— Douglas Wilson

84. “But the important test question here isn’t whether Christianity teaches egalitarianism or an old earth, but what if it clearly didn’t? Would we be embarrassed then? What if Scripture really taught all those horrible things mocked so loudly by moderns-would we be ashamed? This is a wonderful personal test. Think of the most horrible moral or scientific accusation raised against the Christian faith and then ask, what if it’s true? Would we be embarrassed to stand by Christ?”

— Douglas Wilson

85. “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

86. “One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that.”

— Douglas Wilson

87. “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

88. “The point is not to read widely so that your voice will be sort of a mutt descended from them all. The point is to read widely enough to know what delights you, what you would like to imitate, and what you want to stay away from.”

— Douglas Wilson

89. “I enjoy talking to fans.”

— Douglas Wilson

90. “Relationships are supposed to mature. This maturing means growth and improvement, not the constant buzz of the initial rush.”

— Douglas Wilson

91. “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

92. “Joy is deep satisfaction in the will of God, and this must be coupled with recognizing the reality that God’s will is everywhere and in everything. There is no place where we may go and be allowed to murmur or despair because God’s will is somehow “not there.”

— Douglas Wilson

93. “The issue is not the thing, but rather our approach to the thing. Same as with food. Our temptation is to objectify the problem, trying to locate sin in the stuff – in the tobacco, in the alcohol, in the gun, in the donut – instead of where sin is actually located, which is right under the breastbone.”

— Douglas Wilson

94. “We are currently living under a form of government that our Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.”

— Douglas Wilson

95. “I have long said that good teaching consists in loving the subject you are teaching in the presence of students whom you also love.”

— Douglas Wilson

96. “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