Whittaker Chambers quotes - page 2

In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. I began to break away from Communism and to climb from deep within its underground, where for six years I had been buried, back into the world of free men. (Whittaker Chambers)
Once upon a time, when the Yewnited States was just a little shaver among the nations, but already very spoiled along the literate Eastern fringes, there lived younder in Tennessee a lovable old man with a tongue like a rat-tailed file and a face so hard they called him Old Hickory. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure because it is necessary. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
The Hiss Case has turned my wife and me into old people - not a disagreeable condition. But we who used to plan in terms of decades, now find a year, two years, the utmost span of time we can take in. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
A man is not primarily a witness against something. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
What statesmanship! What vision! What power! We have known nothing like it since my ancestor, Peter the Great, broke a window into Europe by overrunning the Baltic states in the 18th Century. Stalin has made Russia great again! View quote
Whittaker Chambers
On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
It is popular to call it a crisis of the Western world. It is in fact a crisis of the whole world. Communism, which claims to be a solution of the crisis, is itself a symptom and an irritant of the crisis. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
When you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wiser. (Whittaker Chambers)
For in this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time - Communism and Freedom - came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
Die goldene Medina. The accent was not on the golden (except in the sense of some mysterious Light), but on the Medina - that is, the city of hope, the city of deliverance. (p. 281) View quote
Whittaker Chambers
In the 20th Century, treason became a vocation whose modern form was specifically the treason of ideas. ("The Circles of Perdition," December 8, 1947) (Whittaker Chambers)
Then he asked in German (the only language that we ever spoke): "Ist die Sowjetregierung eine faschistische Regierung? - Is the Soviet Government a fascist government?"... I sat silent for some moments. Then I said: "Ja, die Sowjetregierung ist eine faschistische Regierung - the Soviet Government is a fascist government"... Krivitsky turned for the first time and looked at me directly. "Du hast recht," he said, "und Kronstadt war der Wendepunkt. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. View quote
Whittaker Chambers
The Wizard of Oz (M. G. M.) should settle an old Hollywood controversy: whether fantasy can be presented on the screen as successfully with human actors as with cartoons. ("The New Pictures," August 21, 1939) View quote
Whittaker Chambers
Toscanini was hailing a great artist, but that voice was more than a magnificent personal talent. It was the religious voice of a whole religious people - probably the most God-obsessed (and man-despised) people since the ancient Hebrews. View quote
Whittaker Chambers