52+ Os Guinness Quotes On Happiness, Education And Liberty

Os Guinness is an American author, social critic, and public speaker. He is best known for his books on the intersection of faith, culture, and politics. He has written over 30 books, including The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Os Guinness on happiness, love, education.

Top 10 Os Guinness Quotes

1. I live before the audience of One-before others I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to prove.
2. Freedom is not the permission to do what you like. It's the power to do what you ought.
3. Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly.
4. What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood.
5. Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be.
6. In working out our callings, we are to perform for one audience, the audience of One.
7. The United States is at a turning point because of a decreasing influence of faith .
8. The opposite of having faith is having self-pity.
9. Calling is a 'yes' to God that carries a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands. Calling is the key to tracing the story line of our lives and unriddling the meaning of our existence in a chaotic world.
10. We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.

Os Guinness Short Quotes

• We may at times be unemployed, but no one ever becomes uncalled.
• Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.
• People in the secular world have too much to live with, too little to live for.
• In our day it's worse to judge evil than to do evil.
• Evangelicalism can only remain evangelical if it is passionately serious about truth and theology.
• We may be in the dark about what God is *doing*, but we are not in the dark about God.
• Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.
• Making the world safe for diversity, is one of the greatest tasks we face in the global era.
• Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see.
• Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.

Os Guinness Quotes About Humanity

God is the ultimate source of all power. All human power is therefore derived, limited, unstable and transient. — Os Guinness

In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like. — Os Guinness

We human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us. — Os Guinness

Os Guinness Quotes About Freedom

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today. — Os Guinness

Everybody is born free. Not everybody is worthy of freedom. — Os Guinness

The rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom. — Os Guinness

Os Guinness Famous Quotes And Sayings

We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself. — Os Guinness

Feast of Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460 The evidence for Christian truth is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient. Too often, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting--it has been found wanting, and not tried. — Os Guinness

If Jesus Christ is the head of the church and hence the source and goal of its entire life, true growth is only possible in obedience to Him. Conversely, if the church becomes detached from Jesus Christ and His Word, it cannot grow however active and successful it may seem to be. — Os Guinness

Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed. — Os Guinness

One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing 'the world' of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world, you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world. — Os Guinness

Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations — Os Guinness

As soon as we ask what faith is and what sort of mistreatment of faith causes doubt, we are led to the first major misconception about doubt-the idea that doubt is always wrong because it is the opposite of faith and the same thing as unbelief. What this error leads to is a view of faith that is unrealistic and a view of doubt that is unfair. — Os Guinness

At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower. — Os Guinness

Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that secular people, losing touch with transcendence, would eventually lose a reference point from which to look down and judge themselves. In the end they would lose even the capacity to despise themselves. Thus, because of the 'death of God', they would confuse heaven with happiness, and happiness with health. — Os Guinness

Whereas our grandparents lived as if they had swallowed gyroscopes, we think and act as if we have swallowed Gallup polls. — Os Guinness

American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés. — Os Guinness

The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless. — Os Guinness

The problem with Western Christians is not that they aren't where they should be but that they aren't what they should be where they are. — Os Guinness

We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God - which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but His descent to us. Without God's descent there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in His grace. — Os Guinness

If there is no Caller, there are no callings - only work. — Os Guinness

In terms of distance, the prodigal's pigsty is the farthest point from home; in terms of time, the pigsty is the shortest distance to the father's house. — Os Guinness

If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt....There is no believing without some doubting, and believing is all the stronger for understanding and resolving doubt. — Os Guinness

Calling means that everyone, everywhere, and in everything fulfills his or her (secondary) callings in response to God's (primary) calling. — Os Guinness

Followers of Jesus who count the cost and are willing to take up their crosses after him must have broad shoulders. — Os Guinness

Christ is the only way to God, but there are as many ways to Christ as there are people who come to Him. — Os Guinness

Too often we forget that the great men of faith reached the heights they did only by going through the depths. — Os Guinness

Atheism thrives on bad religion. — Os Guinness

This is also why it is wrong to treat God as a grand employment agency, a celestial executive searcher to find perfect fits for our perfect gifts. The truth is not that God is finding a place for our gifts but that God has created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing – and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there. — Os Guinness

For the grand and inescapable tradition of western literary classics confronts us with fundamental choices over our understanding of words, reading and art, as well as citizenship, civilization, faith, and the whole notion of the true, the good, and the faithful. — Os Guinness

We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. — Os Guinness

To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth. — Os Guinness

Life Lessons by Os Guinness

1. Os Guinness emphasizes the importance of living with integrity and courage, regardless of the consequences. He encourages readers to think deeply and critically about the world around them, and to strive for a life of meaningful purpose.
2. He believes that the pursuit of justice and freedom is essential for a flourishing society, and that individuals should strive to make a positive difference in the world.
3. He also encourages readers to be mindful of their own personal growth and development, and to strive for excellence in all aspects of life.