Michael Novak Quotes (23 Quotes)

It sounds like we are trying to make new law here and we are really not.

Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.

No great, inspiring culture of the future can be built upon the moral principle of relativism. For at its bottom such a culture holds that nothing is better than anything else, and that all things are in themselves equally meaningless. Except for the fragments of faith (in progress, in compassion, in conscience, in hope) to which it still clings, illegitimately, such a culture teaches every one of its children that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

Even rock stars are entitled to privacy.

Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

If you've ever been in a position in your life where you just can't take any more, you just have to get through the next second, and the next second after that.

Jews do not have to be Christians. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, but too utopian, too hopeful, too unrealistic a turn.

Then again, Christianity seems to have done quite well by mixing worship and commerce. Religion is like yeast in dough, ... It's in every part of life, so for it to show up everywhere is only natural - in commerce, politics, sports, labor unions and so on and so forth.

Our Founders always wondered about how long it would last. The price of liberty is everlasting vigilance. You've got to be on your guard every minute or you will lose it.

To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.

The universe moves in the direction of Liberty.

Tradition lives because young people come along who catch its romance and add new glories to it.

You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic.

Individual freedom is a Jewish idea, but it's one of the functions of Christianity to make this idea universal.

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures.

We really feel happier when things look bleak. Hope is endurance. Hope is holding on and going on and trusting in the Lord.

Love is not a feeling of happiness. Love is a willingness to sacrifice.

Sometimes it's so vulgar that it's not particularly good for religion. But if religion is in everything, it has to be in the vulgar stuff, too.

In God's eyes, there's not before and after. Every moment of time is simultaneous to God.

Christians must be Jews. The truth of what we believe depends on the truth of Judaism, depends on the first covenant.

The Lord God, the creator of Judaism and the God of Judaism and Christianity, empowered our minds and gave us the ability to question.

Not all of those who cry "The poor, the poor!" will enter the kingdom of heaven.