Peter Kreeft Quotes

Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it incorporates the culture in which the interactions took place.

Eavesdrop and write it down from memory - gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop!

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

There's a whole element of human interaction and character interaction that I really enjoy doing.

You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.

The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?

It's interesting how people are sensitive to language and how it works.

Creativity is not a mysterious thing, it's a historical thing.

I feel like communication is the same whether you're cooking for someone or singing or writing a song or writing a play or ordering from McDonald's.

The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.

We are all prisoners of our time and place.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.

God is not only a divine person who we can address in prayer, but also a wide living space We human beings are giving each other space for living when we meet each other in love and friendship.

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.

For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.

We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.

People [are] as much a source of entertainment as they [are] a source of irritation. it keep[s] things balanced.

Our thinking is permeated by our historical myths

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death.

I want to have conversations, because they give you confidence in your choices. I learned it first on Boyz n the Hood, but it is not a race-based experience - it is part of the artistic process.