Fulton J. Sheen Quotes

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.

We find only what we seek: nature has many secrets to give us, but she will not surrender them until we sit down patiently before her and obey her laws. Only by such submission do we receive.

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

It makes no difference whether you have any rules in football; it depends upon how you play. It makes no difference whether you believe triangles have three sides; it depends on how you draw. Can we not see that if we believe wrongly, we will act wrongly?

All intense interest in luxury is a mark of inner poverty. The less grace there is in the soul, the more ornament must be on the body.

The man who has never made a mistake has no need of an eraser; just so the man who has never done anything wrong has no need of a Redeemer.

No one can understand Communism who does not believe in the devil. The Communists believe in the devil. The Communists organized a so-called "patriotic" church. A few brain washed were to be in charge of the churches because they were loyal to the anti-God regime. One of the first orders given by the Communists to them was that the prayer to Prayer to Saint Michael be no longer said because it invoked the protection of St. Michael against "the wickedness and snares of the devil." As one Communist judge said: "We are those devils." It is hard for many in the free world to believe that there are not only bad men, but evil men. Bad men steal, rape, ravage and plunder. Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor. Bad men who steal admit honesty; evil men who do not steal, call dishonesty "honesty," totalitarianism "democracy," slavery "freedom." Evil men can be nice at table, polite with women, courteous in Washington, refined in London and calm in Geneva. But the principle which guides their every move is the maxim of Lenin: every lie, trickery, knavery and deceit must be used to.

The nobler our loves, the nobler our character. To love what is below the human is degradation; to love what is human for the sake of the human is mediocrity; to love the human for the sake of the Divine is enriching; to love the Divine for its own sake is sanctity.

[P]eace of soul implies tranquillity of order, with material things ordered to the body, the body to the soul, the personality to neighbor and to God. Peace of mind is subjective tranquillity — a narrower thing. It requires great moral effort to attain peace of soul, but even those who are indifferent to right and wrong sometimes achieve peace of mind (which the Scriptures call "false peace").

In contrast to the pride of those who deny their guilt to escape self-criticism is the humility of God, who made a world which added not to His glory and then made man to criticize Him.

The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal.

When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it.

The revolt of the modern child against his parents is a miniature of the revolt of the modern world against the memory of 1900 years of Christian culture and the great Hebrew, Grecian and Roman cultures which preceded them. Any respect for that tradition is called "reactionary," with the result that the modern soul has developed a commentator mentality which judges yesterday by today, and today by tomorrow. Nothing is more tragic in an individual who once was wise than to lose his memory, and nothing is more tragic to a civilization than the loss of its tradition.

[H]e is of the intelligentsia (which means he has been educated beyond his intelligence).

The only argument the world will listen to now is the argument of personal holiness. It has heard all the rest and rejected them.