Top 100 Schaeffer Quotes
#1. Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
Garry Kasparov
#2. What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people? Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.
Nancy Pearcey
#3. As Schaeffer once wrote, there is nothing uglier than theological orthodoxy without understanding or compassion.
Nancy Pearcey
#4. As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, "The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars" (5).
Leland Ryken
#5. After a dazed moment, Specialist Kit Murphy put his arms loosely around her, and Josie Schaeffer clung to him, knowing this man was not her husband, that her husband was never coming back, but for now she was as close to him as she could get and she would not let him go.
Siobhan Fallon
#6. Schaeffer gave me permission to work in the studio with a technician, but I've never worked with him.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
#7. Whereas Schaeffer and Henry were working like samplers, their idea was to capture those sounds which couldn't be serially calibrated because they were too complex in character.
Luc Ferrari
#8. Many people operate as though the definition of faith were, Don't ask questions, just believe. They quote Jesus himself, who taught his followers to have the faith of a child (Mark 10:15). But I once heard Francis Schaeffer respond by saying, "Don't you realize how many questions children ask?"
Nancy Pearcey
#9. Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful - Christian community is the final apologetic.
Francis Schaeffer
#10. What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards: (1) technical excellence, (2) validity, (3) intellectual content, the world view which comes through and (4) the integration of content and vehicle.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#11. Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization.
Pierre Schaeffer
#12. Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
Francis Schaeffer
#13. All men bear the image of God. They have value not because they are redeemed, but because they are God's creation in God's image.
Francis Schaeffer
#14. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be a vehicle for self-conscious evangelism. Christians ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. The Christian is the really free man. He is free to have imagination.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#16. But our world at the end of the twentieth century has so much destruction without Christian artists so emphasizing the minor theme in the total body of their work that they add to the poorness and destruction of our generation.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#17. Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it.
Francis Schaeffer
#18. As a Christian I do not have to find my validity in my status, or by thinking myself above other men. My validity and my status are found in being before the God who is there.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#19. When a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as a man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and his body. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#20. Thank God for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with God himself.
Francis Schaeffer
#21. The impressionists, Debussy, Faure, in France, did take a few steps forward.
Pierre Schaeffer
#22. Everyone who has any talent at all in sketching, painting, sculpturing or carving, should have the opportunity to use that talent. The expression is important for the person, and can tremendously enrich the lives of other people. What can you do?
Edith Schaeffer
#23. It seems to me that a spiritual sensibility is built into human nature. Formal religion may or may not disappear but art, love and a desire to find beauty will remain.
Frank Schaeffer
#24. The thing about real life is that important events don't announce themselves ... Usually something that is going to change your whole life is a memory before you can stop and be impressed about it.
Edith Schaeffer
#25. You must not lose confidence in God because you lost confidence in your pastor. If our confidence in God had to depend upon our confidence in any human person, we would be on shifting sand.
Francis Schaeffer
#26. People drift from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.
Francis Schaeffer
#27. Children are meant to understand compassion and comfort because they have received compassion and comfort - and this should be in the family setting. A family should be a place where comfort is experienced and understood, so that the people are prepared to give comfort to others.
Edith Schaeffer
#28. I also happened to sincerely believe in my father's message, though "believe" is perhaps the wrong word. Rather, I had not yet begun to question my indoctrination.
Frank Schaeffer
#29. Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?
Pierre Schaeffer
#31. Preaching the gospel without the Holy Spirit is to miss the entire point of the command of Jesus Christ for our era. In the area of "Christian activities" or "Christian service," how we are doing it is at least as important as what we are doing.
Francis Schaeffer
#32. Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.
Francis Schaeffer
#33. The purpose of apologetics is not just to win an argument or a discussion, but that people with whom we are in contact may become Christians and then live under the Lordship of Christ in the whole spectrum of life.
Francis Schaeffer
#34. To demand the art forms of yesterday in either word systems or art is a bourgeois failure.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#35. The ordinary Christian with the Bible in his hand can say that the majority is wrong.
Francis Schaeffer
#36. There is no place in God's world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#37. The great distinction of a true Christian is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. How careful should he be, lest anything in his thoughts or feelings would be offensive to the Divine Guest.!
Francis Schaeffer
#39. Hudson Taylor said, "The Lord's work done in the Lord's way will never fail to have the Lord's provision." ... The Lord's work done in human energy is not the Lord's work any longer. It is something, but it is not the Lord's work.
Francis Schaeffer
#40. There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#41. That is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it.
Francis Schaeffer
#42. Christ is with those in paradise now. But Christ - the same Christ, with the same reality - promises the Christian that he will bring forth fruit through us in this life now. The power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ will bring forth this fruit through us now.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#43. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free. Once more a humanistic utopianism ends in tyranny, whether in Rousseau's writing or in the Reign of Terror which carried his position to its conclusion. Robespierre,
Francis A. Schaeffer
#44. You are not Christ's disciple, in the sense of following him, if this is not your way of life: rejected and slain daily!
Francis Schaeffer
#45. A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#46. In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.
Pierre Schaeffer
#47. We will never find a "good" solution to the question of abortion. What we need to do is to back away from the idea that there is an ideological "fix" to every problem. Then again, that's just one opinion. And I could be wrong. I often am.
Frank Schaeffer
#49. Probably writers should forget what it was like to write the last novel, and the one before that, and the one before that, or we should all be plumbers. It must be good to be a plumber. Everyone is happy to see you, and no one reviews your work.
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
#51. In the flesh rather than the work of the Spirit, it is easy to say we are showing holiness and it only be egotistic pride and hardness.
Francis Schaeffer
#52. We're living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We'd rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.
Frank Schaeffer
#53. The Lord is the General, and he has the right ... the sovereign right ... to put us where he wants in the battle.
Francis Schaeffer
#54. If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals.
Francis Schaeffer
#55. I do not want to heap coals of fire on anyone's head, but I would like to advise those who keep the living thought of the dead hidden away in cardboard boxes, to pass on as quickly as possibly such explosive material, whose only legitimate heir is the whole world, that is to say, my neighbor.
Pierre Schaeffer
#56. If we do not show love to one another, the world has a right to question whether Christianity is true.
Francis Schaeffer
#57. You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. Now you have the nerve to criticize the 'architect' America just hired - President Obama - to rebuild from the ashes.
Frank Schaeffer
#60. The Cross of Christ is to be a reality to me not only once for all at my conversion, but all through my life as a Christian. True spirituality does not stop at the negative (death), but without the negative - in comprehension and in practice - we are not ready to go on.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#61. Most people do not realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even before the Revolutionary War ended.
Francis Schaeffer
#62. The whole problem of the sound-work is distancing oneself from the dramatic.
Pierre Schaeffer
#63. If Christians win a battle by using worldly means, they have really lost.
Francis Schaeffer
#64. To die is to be with the Lord. It is not just an idea, it is a reality.
Francis Schaeffer
#65. The moment at which music reveals its true nature is contained in the ancient exercise of the theme with variations. The complete mystery of music is explained right there.
Pierre Schaeffer
#66. The Christian should be the man with the flaming imagination and the beauty of creation.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#67. The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change.
Pierre Schaeffer
#68. For anyone who wants to write, and hopes some day to publish what he or she has written, it is far more important to write than it is to study about writing.
Edith Schaeffer
#69. We foolish mortals sometimes live through years not realizing how short life is, and that TODAY is your life.
Edith Schaeffer
#71. Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within our perception.
Pierre Schaeffer
#72. I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#73. in the absence of a biblical morality a new elite will always come forward to dictate arbitrary absolutes to society
Francis A. Schaeffer
#74. Eternity will be wonderful, but there is one thing heaven will not contain, and that is the call, the possibility, and the privilege of living a supernatural life here and now by faith, before we meet Jesus face to face.
Francis Schaeffer
#75. Since science is fashionable today, it allows its fraternity to propose cloddish monstrosities as a solution to man's problems in many fields. Fashion rules and, anyway, who but the experts can even dare to speak up?
Frank Schaeffer
#76. We should not view men with a cynical eye, seeing them only as meaningless products of chance, but, on the other hand, we should not go to the opposite extreme of seeing them romantically. To do either is to fail to understand who men really are
creatures made in the image of God but fallen.
Francis Schaeffer
#77. Sometimes the greatest deterrent to a great marriage is believing you have a perfect marriage.
Francis Schaeffer
#78. I'm very aware of what you're talking about as I was involved with the radio in Africa in the same period as I was doing Concrete - I was doing both at the same time.
Pierre Schaeffer
#79. If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
Francis Schaeffer
#80. The soul is not more important than the body. God made the whole man and the whole man is important.
Francis Schaeffer
#81. We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle. This is not a friendly gentleman's discussion. It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and those who claim the name of Christ.
Francis Schaeffer
#82. The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.
Francis Schaeffer
#83. Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true.
Pierre Schaeffer
#84. If the church is what it should be, young people will be there. But they will not just 'be there' - they will be there with the blowing of horns and the clashing of high-sounding cymbals, and they will come dancing with flowers in their hair.
Francis Schaeffer
#85. How can art be sufficiently meaningful? If it is offered up merely before men, then it does not have a sufficient integration point.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#86. This shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty.
Francis Schaeffer
#88. Unconditional love is a love that says to a child, "I love who you are no matter what, even though I may not
Brenda Schaeffer
#89. If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.
Francis Schaeffer
#90. The one thing the media abhors almost without exception is anyone who takes a firm stand on any issue out of religious principle, unless their stand happens to coincide with their expressed views.
Francis Schaeffer
#91. The beginning of men's rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.
Francis Schaeffer
#92. Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains!" Rousseau saw the primitive as innocent and autonomous freedom as the final good. We
Francis A. Schaeffer
#93. Writing for enjoyment of expression does not need an audience of more than one.
Edith Schaeffer
#94. We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#95. People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs.
Pierre Schaeffer
#96. Some psychological and sociological conditioning occurs in every man's life and this affects the decisions he makes. But we must resist the modern concept that all sin can be explained merely on the basis of conditioning.
Francis Schaeffer
#97. It is only as we consciously bring each victory to His feet, and keep it there as we think of it - and especially as we speak of it - that we can avoid the pride of that victory, which can be worse than the sin over which we claim to have had the victory.
Francis Schaeffer
#98. God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man.
Francis Schaeffer
#99. But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice.
Francis A. Schaeffer
#100. We were busy judging everyone's spiritual state. We had a lot to do. Only God might be able to see their hearts and innermost thoughts, but we had a pretty good idea of how it was going to go for plenty of folks on the Judgment Day. Not so well.
Frank Schaeffer
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
