William Ernest Hocking quotes

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt. (William Ernest Hocking)
I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner continuity,--i. e., the conscious intentions of the participants in history-making and their consciously known successes. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Pure community is a matter of no interest to any will; but a community which pursues a common good is of supreme interest to all wills; and what we have here said is that whatever the nature of that common good ... it must contain the development of individual powers, as a prior condition for all other goods. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Without good-will, no man has any presumptive right, except the right or opportunity to change his will, so long as there is hope of it. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
The only thing that can set aside a law as wrong is a better law, or an idea of a better law. And the only thing that an give a law the quality of better or worse is the concrete result which it promotes or fails to promote. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
We are driven to confess that we actually care more for religion than we do for religious theories and ideas: and in merely making that distinction between religion and its doctrine-elements, have we not already relegated the latter to an external and subordinate position? Have we not asserted that "religion itself" has some other essence or constitution than mere idea or thought? View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Every social need, such as the need for friendship, must be a party to its own satisfaction: I cannot passively find my friend as a ready-made friend; a ready-made human being he may be, but his friendship for me I must help to create by my own active resolve. (William Ernest Hocking)
Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists. And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Principle I : Legal rights are presumptive rights. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Principle III : Presumptive rights are the conditions under which individual powers normally develop. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
This merely formal conceiving of the facts of one's own wretchedness is at the same time a departure from them--placing them in the object. It is not idle, therefore, to observe reflexively that in that very Thought, one has separated himself from them, and is no longer that which empirically he still sees himself to be. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Principle II : The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions : they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Religion is bound up in the difference between the sense of ignorance and the sense of mystery: the former means, "I know not"; the latter means "I know not; but it is known." View quote
William Ernest Hocking
There is, then, in these matters some absolute finding in the seeking: salvation is, to seek salvation, for in seeking it one has already abandoned mortality and his sin. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
A presumption of equality may be contrary to present fact, and yet not contrary to a desideratum. We are not as a fact all equally fit to live, equally responsible, or equally deserving of the protection of the law: but it will hardly be doubted that it would be desirable if we were. But further, the presumption of a desired condition is, in any group of plastic minds, a force tending to bring about the thing presumed, i. e., to create it. It aids a boy to reach maturity to treat him as if he were a little older than he is. A little older: for the presumption loses its effect if it is too wide of the actual fact. The fundamental presumptions of the law are justified on this basis and to this extent: if they are too wide of the truth to be creative, they are not justified. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
We cannot swing up on a rope that is attached only to our own belt. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
Somewhere in each man, we imagine, there lies an ultimatum, to be backed by all his energies from all reservoirs, ordinary and extraordinary. (William Ernest Hocking)
The lover widens his experience as the non-lover cannot. He adds to the mass of his idea-world, and acquires thereby enhanced power to appreciate all things. Is not this the sufficient solution of that long-standing difficulty between 'egoism and altruism? View quote
William Ernest Hocking
For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
There can be no valid worship except that in which man is involuntarily bent by the presence of the Most Real, beyond his will. View quote
William Ernest Hocking
For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view of law is singularly empty of light and leading. View quote
William Ernest Hocking