Dreher Quotes

#1. I agree with Dreher when he writes, 'we can't build anything good unless we live by the belief that man does not exist to serve the economy, but the economy exists to serve man ... A society built on consumerism must break down eventually for the same reason socialism did'

Paul Weyrich

#2. Dreher is correct in saying that traditionalist conservatives also have been conservationists ... I think most conservatives should agree that this is an area we need to think more about.

Paul Weyrich

#3. Genesis tells us that from the very beginning, masculinity, femininity, and sex are created by God and bound to Creation.

Rod Dreher

#4. if you wait around for the church, or someone else, to get something going, it may never happen. What are you waiting for? It's

Rod Dreher

#5. History gives us no clean, straight causal lines binding events and giving them clear order. History is a poem, not a syllogism.

Rod Dreher

#6. But American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears.

Rod Dreher

#7. The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.

Rod Dreher

#8. Remember the importance of small actions. They're the building blocks in the architecture of your life, the quiet victories you win for yourself each day.

Diane Dreher

#9. Where another person sees problems, a leader sees possibilities ... Leaders must have the courage to follow their vision, to believe in the invisible, to work for something that's still only a possibility, while others often wring their hands in despair.

Diane Dreher

#10. If there is going to be authentic renewal, it will have to happen in families and local church communities.

Rod Dreher

#11. faith that's primarily intellectual - that is, a matter of mastering information - is deceptively fragile.

Rod Dreher

#12. The fact is, all education is directed to some end, and if parents don't make conscious decisions on what that end is, they are simply abdicating their role in setting the direction" of their children's lives.

Rod Dreher

#13. A judgmental attitude helps neither ourselves nor others. Arguing or preaching rarely changes other people. Even if our opinions are justified, criticizing others usually makes them wary and defensive. And it takes our attention away from our own lives, which we can change.

Diane Dreher

#14. Gardening can become a spiritual exercise, teaching us discernment as we eliminate the weeds from our lives, giving what we value room to grow.

Diane Dreher

#15. Our greatest natural resources are our hearts and minds, together with those of the people around us.

Diane Dreher

#16. Whatever the self-righteous excesses of the environmentalist left, it is impossible to be true to traditional conservative values (to say nothing of the Christian faith conservatives like me profess) and hold laissez faire attitudes about the use and abuse of the natural world.

Rod Dreher

#17. Jesus Christ promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His church, but He did not promise that Hell would not prevail against His church in the West. That depends on us, and the choices we make right here, right now.

Rod Dreher

#18. Developing the cognitive control that leads to a more contemplative Christian life is the key to living as free men and women in post-Christian America. The man whose desires are under the control of his reason is free. The man who does whatever occurs to him is a slave. Untold

Rod Dreher

#19. Accept the limitations of a place, in humility, and the joys that can also be found there may open themselves.

Rod Dreher

#20. Any group has a sense of who it is and what is values, but this sense often remains beneath the surface. A wise leader can discern these unspoken beliefs and articulate them.

Diane Dreher

#21. When confronted by conflict and confusion, another practice is to take a deep breath, pause and ask: 'Where is the gift in this?

Diane Dreher

#22. Wise leaders know that if an individual doesn't count, the institution doesn't count for much either. Put mathematically, if the individual is a zero, together a lot of zeros add up to a whole lot of nothing.

Diane Dreher

#23. Watch the speech. Really, watch: if this man gets his party's nomination, he's going to be the next president. By a landslide. And he is going to transform this country. If I were a Republican, I'd be very, very afraid. Oh wait, I am a Republican.

Rod Dreher

#24. Still, as I have said, accepting that God loved me was something I did only on the level of theory.

Rod Dreher

#25. Leaders are not buffeted about by circumstance. They make what is into what might be, transforming challenging situations by means of courage and insight.

Diane Dreher

#26. perhaps the greatest poem ever written

Rod Dreher

#27. To be at peace in any endeavour, we must release our need to control the outcome.

Diane Dreher

#28. Be grateful for holiness when you find it among churchmen, but do not expect it. As Flannery O'Connor wrote, "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist it as well as others.

Rod Dreher

#29. A virtuous society, by contrast, is one that shares belief in objective moral goods and the practices necessary for human beings to embody those goods in community. To

Rod Dreher

#30. I quite often feel that my greatest task as a father is to raise children who love what is good, true, and beautiful, and who are therefore aliens in this popular culture.

Rod Dreher

#31. With a few exceptions, conservative Christian political activists are as ineffective as White Russian exiles, drinking tea from samovars in their Paris drawing rooms, plotting the restoration of the monarchy. One wishes them well but knows deep down that they are not the future.

Rod Dreher

#32. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

Rod Dreher

#33. In nature everything is valuable, everything has its place. The rose, the daisy, the lark, the squirrel, each is different but beautiful. Each has its own expression. Each flower its' own fragrance. Each bird its' own song. So you too have your own unique melody.

Diane Dreher

#34. A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing goes against it," said G. K. Chesterton. That

Rod Dreher

#35. As a good gardener prepares the soil, so a wise leader creates an environment that promotes community ... community involves a common place, a common time, and a common purpose. Just getting people in the same place at the same time does not produce a team. Community requires a common vision.

Diane Dreher

#36. The number one advice I give to my students is to be a culture creator, not a culture consumer," he continued. "You have to have time to create, and to create, you have to get rid of those things that steal your time. TV is the great time-stealer in American life.

Rod Dreher

#37. A wise traveler reaches his goal and rests," he continues. "The wanderer never reaches it, but with great lethargy of mind forever directs his hungry eyes before him.

Rod Dreher

#38. Regular meditation not only restores our inner harmony and vital energy, but provides us with an actual experience of the peace we seek.

Diane Dreher

#39. If family is so important to us conservatives, why do so many of us bring into our daily lives so many things that take away from family life?

Rod Dreher

#40. Ideology is a partial truth masquerading as the whole truth.

Rod Dreher

#41. At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

Rod Dreher

#42. There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster, not away: cops, firemen and reporters.

Rod Dreher

#43. A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist.

Rod Dreher

#44. It is better to choose to know the painful truth rather than settle on a comforting lie. Resolve to look for and to accept the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Nothing built on lies lasts.

Rod Dreher

#45. If everyone, including himself, loved as they should love, they would love God more than they loved themselves and their passions.

Rod Dreher

#46. Our food is a sign of what we've lost in general. I think if we could start slowing down for food, and rebuilding the quality of our plates, we could start rebuilding what we've lost in our culture. As my boss says, culture starts in the kitchen, not in the opera house.

Rod Dreher

#47. The first part of saving your life is coming to understand how you endangered it by loving wrongly, and living under the rule of your passions.

Rod Dreher

#48. People long for God, and more of them than we might think are willing to accept the idea that getting close to him might be painful. The church needs to worry less about coddling our superficial tastes and impulses and more about giving us the whole truth.

Rod Dreher