In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves.

If you catch poisonous fish, throw it back into the sea.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.

My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.

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

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

We are inconsistent, said Mother Teresa, to care about violence, and to care about hungry children in places like India and Africa, and yet not care about the millions who are killed by the deliberate choice of their own mothers.

One prominent spiritual leader insists, "The only way to have a genuine spiritual revival is to have legislative reform." Could he have that backwards?

From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.

The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political issues that it plays by the rules of power, which are rules of ungrace

In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands--the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth--I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrines were less ambiguous.

Thielicke gently turned his parishioners to the example of Jesus who saw like no one else the anguish and injustice, the terror, of this planet. Shouldn't such awareness have filled his every waking hour and robbed him of sleep at night? Shouldn't it have shaken his very soul?