D. Elton Trueblood Quotations

We need to be agnostics first and then there is some chance at arriving at a sensible system of belief.

The only way to happiness is never to give happiness a thought.

Religion is never devoid of emotion, any more than love is. It is not a defect of religion, but rather its glory, that it speaks always the language of feeling.

The world is equally shocked at hearing Christianity criticized and seeing it practiced.

Thoughtful people are concerned with the future because that is the only area of experience about which anything can be done. We cannot change the past, and the present is gone as soon as it is reported, but the future is that in which we can make a difference.

The ultimate verification of our religion consists of the changed lives to which it can point and for which it is responsible.

Engineering is a predictive science, not a manipulative art.

Democracy is necessitated by the fact that all men are sinners; it is made possible by the fact that we know it. ...

Our religion is one which challenges the ordinary human standards by holding that the ideal of life is the spirit of a little child. We tend to glorify adulthood and wisdom and worldly prudence, but the Gospel reverses all this. The Gospel says that the inescapable condition of entrance into the divine fellowship is that we turn and become as a little child.

The more we study the early Church, the more we realize that it was a society of ministers. About the only similarity between the Church at Corinth and a contemporary congregation, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, is that both are marked, to a great degree, by the presence of sinners.