Quotes by Dallas Willard

About Dallas Willard:

Dallas Albert Willard was an American philosopher also known for his writings on Christian spiritual formation. Much of his work in philosophy was related to phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, many of whose writings he translated into English for the first time. He was longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Great power requires great character if it is to be a blessing and not a curse, and that character is something we only grow toward.

Dallas Willard

Jesus, Willard says, “does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.

Dallas Willard

The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.

Dallas Willard

He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always ...

Dallas Willard

(God's) nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging. But his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not. This does not diminish him. Far from it. He would be a lesser God if h...

Dallas Willard

Many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of. Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about ‘good things’ that h...

Dallas Willard

The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind on God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. "When I awake, I am still with thee" (Psalm 139:18). The t...

Dallas Willard

There is no question of doing is purely on our own. But we must act. Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the kingdom and to the life of restful power in mi...

Dallas Willard

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental ...

Dallas Willard

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

Dallas Willard

Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from...

Dallas Willard

Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.

Dallas Willard

There is no avoiding the fact that we live at the mercy of our ideas This is never more true than with our ideas about God.

Dallas Willard

The union Christ had with the Father was the greatest that we can conceive of in this life—if indeed we can conceive of it. Yet we have no indication that even Jesus was constantly awash with revelations as to what he should do. His union with the ...

Dallas Willard

Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.

Dallas Willard

Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those th...

Dallas Willard

We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.

Dallas Willard

To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.

Dallas Willard

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual charact...

Dallas Willard

Multitudes are now turning to Christ in all parts of the world. How unbearably tragic it would be, though, if the millions of Asia, South America and Africa were led to believe that the best we can hope for from the Way of Christ is the level of Chri...

Dallas Willard

Author Bio

  • NameDallas Willard
  • DescriptionAmerican philosopher
  • BornSeptember 4, 1935
  • DiedMay 8, 2013
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAuthor; Translator; Philosopher