The Church, the organized expression of the religious life of the past, is one of the most potent institutions and forces in Western civilization. ...It cannot help throwing its immense weight on one side or the other. If it tries not to act, it thereby acts; and in any case its choice will be decisive for its own future.
Walter RauschenbuschRelated topics
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Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize - because they set so little store by them - the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
His religious requirements-that the service come from Cranmer's rites in the old prayer book, that it take 33 minutes or less, that the church be within 10 minutes' driving distance and that the altar be sufficiently simple so that it wouldn't remind him of a gift shop-limited his choice of parishes.
John Cheever
A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristic of western civilization comes to a head in modern science, and finds its highest material expression in the technology of the machine industry.
Thorstein Veblen
A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristic of western civilization comes to a head in modern science, and finds its highest material expression in the technology of the machine industry.
Frank Knight
Unlike some, I don't claim to hold the mystic key to the future. But judging from past events, it seems to me that those who want to prophesy the imminent end of America's unique global role have a harder case to make than those who think we will limp on for a while, making a mess of things as usual.
Walter Russell Mead