danielkeem

“Faith… is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations.” - Elton Trueblood

“Of course, the questions “What should I do?” and “Who should I be?” are not unrelated. But the order in which we ask them matters. If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self… What good is it for me to choose the right job if I’m still consumed with selfishness? What good is it for me to choose the right home or spouse if I’m still eaten up with covetousness? What does it profit me to make the right choice if I’m still the wrong person?” A lost person can make “good choices.” But only a person in dwelt by the Holy Spirit can make a good choice for the purpose of glorifying God. The hope of the gospel in our sanctification is not simply that we would make better choices, but that we would become better people.” - Jen Wilkin

“Liberalism, as we shall see, is based on a belief in the primacy of the individual, and we seem now to be suffering the consequences of an untrammeled individualism in the form of a variety of intractable social ills. An emphasis on rights without the counteremphasis on responsibilities leaves us with precious little basis for genuine community, as we North Americans are learning to our great regret. Even democracy, which values community more highly than liberalism does, has degenerated into something approaching a pure majoritarianism allowing little genuine space for potentially dissenting communities and distrusting anything that might detract from loyalty to the democratic people. Democracy has become popular again, especially in the former communist countries. But there it is synonymous with the consumer-driven prosperity of such countries as Germany and the United States, and not with the public virtues needed to make a participatory political system work. Moreover, as Ryszard Legutko has argued, liberal democracy, especially in the European Union, has totalitarian propensities decreasingly tolerant of genuine pluralism.” - David T. Koyzis

“Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what he gave you the chance to do today.”

“This is nearly a reversal of business thinking today. The goal today seems to be to squeeze the worker until he can give no more. Rather than invest in him, rather than seek his good so he is better able to seek the good of his employer, we instead set up a tension between labor and management that is counterproductive to both. We seem to have forgotten the idea of a corporate destiny - that workers and owners, labor and management, prosper together or decline separately. We have forgotten tha in a moral free market, social uplift best happens through the power of benevolent employment. It is in the world of work that men gain skills, have character modeled for them, gain a broader education, learn to lead, and are given the tools of advancements for their families. Guinness understood this. The company did not drain a man and then expect the church or the state to rebuild him again. They invested. They paid high wages, offered every type of education, provided medicine, sports, entertainment, and even a place to think, and assured every kind of financial safety net for those who served them well. They also built houses, sent sons to college, and lifted whole families to new economic heights. They did this because it was the right thing to do yes, but also because it made their firm more successful than those who did not understand this kind of vital investment.” - Stephen Mansfield

“‘We followed our traditional policy of considering long and acting quickly.’ ...It is an approach that would serve us well today, when data passes itself off as information and speed is offered as a substitute to wise planning and strategies well designed. In an age which knowledge increases nearly exponentially, it is easy to become lazy and move too fast. no, the wise man today... defies pressure in order to ponder and even to pray. And then he acts, when he knows who he is and what he should do, when he has anticipated the results and when his resources are rightly prepared. This is the decision making that leads to fortune and it may take greater courage than any other task a good leader must fulfill.” - Stephen Mansfield

“It is a lesson we ought to absorb and apply to our own work. We tend to think short term. We tend to expect each generation to start from beginning and then rise on its own. But this is a modern way of thinking. In ages past, each generation was expected to launch the next, and great families of wealth and influence arose as a result. Perhaps this can be the meaning of Guinness for us, that we learn again to build for centuries rather than decades and that we do so selflessly, knowing that the measure of our lives is not determined at our death but rather in the lives and accomplishments of generations yet to come.” -Stephen Mansfield

“One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with resignation of power and power with a denial of love... what is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love, implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” - Martin Luther King Jr.