William Howard Taft Quotes

Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.

Aim at nothing short of covering these islands [Hawaii] with fruit fields and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches; of raising up the whole people to an elevated state of Christian civilization …. Turn them from their barbarous courses.

A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical enactments.

Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life.

Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.

The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.

There are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.

Whatever of true glory has been won by any nation of the earth; whatever great advance his been made by any nation in that which constitutes a high Christian civilization, has been always at the cost of sacrifice; has cost the price marked upon it in God's inventory of national good.

What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.

The Christian theory of the sacredness of the Bible has been at the cost of the world's civilization.

The death penalty has succeeded in America, not in spite of Christians, but because of us. The Bible Belt is the Death Belt. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions are happening, and that's deeply troubling to me.

The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people's expectations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be. They are still here, walking among us. We just don't recognize them anymore.

As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him.

Judeo-Christian revelation is not the negative influence secularists proclaim it to be. Rather, it is the taproot of our civilization.

So, my fellow Christians, protest this film if you like, but then how about devoting some energy to fill the vacuum created by your retreat from popular culture.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

Civilized people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.

Non-churchgoer s tend to see Christians as takers rather than givers. When Christians sacrifice and give wildly to the poor, that is truly a light that glimmers. The Bible teaches that the church is to be that light, that sign of hope, in an increasingly dark and hopeless world.

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

I understand that what I am to do is to be a bridge between the people who would never set foot in a church in their entire lives and people who would like to get them there. So I write books that Christians can give to their non-Christian friends that they will actually read.

The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does.

It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians. It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs.

If the Lord is coming soon, is this not a very practical motive for greater missionary effort? I know of no other motive that has been so stimulating to myself.

Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.