N. T. Wright Quotes

There's a big mistake the left has made with talking to religious people, which is attempting to talk them out of their interpretations of the Bible, attempting to have theological debate with them. When I'm on right-wing whackjob radio, when people call up to inform me that I'm going to hell, I concede the point. "I'm going to hell. Yes. Can you leave me alone now?"

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves.

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.

I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains.

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room--a complete mess--so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.

The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious.

People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God - that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ" - and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.

I guess now I view music as my career. I want to do it forever, regardless of whether or not it's my means of living.

Things were very different back in 1992. There was unrest in the Middle East, we had a gridlocked Congress, and everybody was talking about Bill Cosby.

If someone doesn't answer your email within six hours, it means they hate you.

Sometimes with these things all the pieces fall into place. I mean, we've been talking about this for years and we don't have the script now, but sometimes things fall into place very quickly, and if everything lines up it could happen.

I don't want anybody to be under a misunderstanding. Donald Trump never even said the word "assassination." That was the word used by Hillary Clinton in 2008, which CNN is calling a gaffe. (impression) "But Trump meant it! Yeah, Trump, he meant it." With Hillary, "It was a gaffe! We all know Hillary Clinton, and we all know Hillary Clinton didn't really mean what she said." Yeah, right. Double standards.

I don't know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they're really good. And there's just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there's going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don't care whether it's art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don't think so.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

You try to make every word count, so there's no doubt what you're talking about. When you're young, you waffle away. Well, I'm done with that. I think it's much more interesting to say just what you mean.

Orthodoxy, my Lord,: said Bishop Warburton, in a whisper, — orthodoxy is my doxy, — heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.

I think it's pretty classic if you look at the way entertainment reflects the country's status. There was a reason in the '50s when communism was bubbling that there were a million zombie movies. Because that is the direct allocation. So for the last two years we've been hearing, "Make America great again." People go, "Well, America was never great." What do you mean? What you mean is that they want to look back in history. And so I think it's only natural for entertainment to reflect that.

Historically, means cannot be separated from ends.

I had dinner in Washington way, way back. This goes back to the nineties. It was the Jockey Club which was the restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, and I can't mention the names, but boy, would I love to. I mean, you know these people. They're Democrats, Democrat campaign chairman, and they're talking about [Jordan] Vernon. They're openly admitting it.