Jaroslav Pelikan Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

Jaroslav Pelikan
Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries... It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.

Jaroslav Pelikan
An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative.

Jaroslav Pelikan
The church is always more than a school. But the church cannot be less than a school.

Jaroslav Pelikan
The scholarly record is ultimately a written one: this is the foundation for the principle, often maligned and sometimes abused of "publish or perish."

Jaroslav Pelikan
Both Socrates and Jesus were outstanding teachers; both of them urged and practiced great simplicity of life; both were regarded as traitors to the religion of their community; neither of them wrote anything; both of them were executed; and both have become the subject of traditions that are difficult or impossible to harmonize.

Jaroslav Pelikan
Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading-such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture-is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber.

Jaroslav Pelikan