Douglas Wilson Quotes

Only a madman would try to market headache medicine today under the name John's Headache Pills. This would be insufficiently techno-marvelous. No, the name must sound like it carne out of a laboratory yesterday ... Zantistat 100, or something like that.
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
Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig or as a hash slinger at a truck stop in Kentucky. Know what it smells like out there. If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries.
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
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
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
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
The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else.
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
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
Violent overthrow of the revolution is revolutionary, and compromise with the revolution is revolutionary.
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
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
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
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
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
If boys don't learn, men won't know.
Douglas Wilson
They had money - quite a bit of it, actually - but for them, money was just bullets.
Douglas Wilson
Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.
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
God gave us minds to think with and hearts to thank with. Instead we use our hearts to think about the world as we would like it to have been, and we use our minds to come up with rationalizations for our ingratitude. We are a murmuring, discontented, unhappy, ungrateful people. And because we think we want salvation from our discontents...
Douglas Wilson
This particular strand of feminism is characterized by two tenets: 1. men are jerks, and 2. women should strive by all means to become like them.
Douglas Wilson
...if the Democrats suggested a plan to burn down the Capitol building, the Republicans would counter with a plan to do it over the course of three years.
Douglas Wilson
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
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
Education is the process of selling someone on books.
Douglas Wilson
The blessing has been so significatn that we have continued our satiric tact [sic] with an additional objective in mind -- keeping the suits and haircuts away. Whenever a promising movement of the Holy Spirit begins nowadays, one of the first things that happens is that the agents, businessmen, and other assorted handlers move in so that they might straighten out certain unmarketable "blemishes" in order to take the show on the road. And when a promising ministry hits the big time, the unfortunate people in it are made twice as much sons of hell as their promoters. It is therefore our resolve to stay as unmarketable as we can. If we ever get invited to the Great Black Tie Banquet of Evangelicalism, we want everyone there to be braced for the moment when we, on a prearranged signal, throw our dinner rolls at Pat Robertson
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
Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.
Douglas Wilson