Hu Shih quotes

Hu Shih was a Chinese philosopher, essayist, and diplomat who played a key role in the New Culture Movement. A leading advocate for literary reform, he promoted the use of vernacular Chinese over classical forms. He contributed significantly to modern Chinese thought and education. Here are 25 of his quotes:

India Conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. (Hu Shih)
Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility. View quote
Hu Shih
On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger. View quote
Hu Shih
And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority. View quote
Hu Shih
What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another; and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group, may in a different environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty. View quote
Hu Shih
Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic. View quote
Hu Shih
It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood. View quote
Hu Shih
Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. View quote
Hu Shih
It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be. View quote
Hu Shih
The Jesuits had learned that a Christian mission to China could never succeed if it were not in a position to show and convince the Chinese intelligentsia of the superiority of the European culture. View quote
Hu Shih
Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people. (Hu Shih)
Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights. View quote
Hu Shih
In such diffused changes of culture two factors are necessary: contact and understanding. View quote
Hu Shih
The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development. View quote
Hu Shih
Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists. View quote
Hu Shih
And lastly, the political revolutions from 1911 to the present time have done more to bring about tremendous social changes everywhere than even the economic and industrial changes and the new schools. View quote
Hu Shih
The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance. View quote
Hu Shih
On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people. View quote
Hu Shih
But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious. View quote
Hu Shih
In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language. View quote
Hu Shih
No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience, even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India. (Hu Shih)
For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples. View quote
Hu Shih
Historically, there had been many periods of Chinese Renaissance. View quote
Hu Shih
After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people, these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country. View quote
Hu Shih
It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood. What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another; and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group, may in a sdifferent environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty. View quote
Hu Shih

Hu Shih

Hu Shih - Image
Occupation: Chinese Philosopher
Born: December 17, 1891
Died: February 24, 1962
Quotes count: 25

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