Once you give people the idea that all this can be done by the State, and that it is somehow second-best or even degrading to leave it to private people...then you will begin to deprive human beings of one of the essential ingredients of humanity-personal moral responsibility. You will in effect dry up in them the milk of human kindness. If you allow people to hand over to the State all their personal responsibility, the time will come-indeed it is close at hand-when what the taxpayer is willing to provide for the good of humanity will be seen to be far less than what the individual used to be willing to give from love of his neighbour. So do not be tempted to identify virtue with collectivism. I wonder whether the State services would have done as much for the man who fell among thieves as the Good Samaritan did for him? ...the role of the State in Christian Society is to encourage virtue, not to usurp it.
Margaret ThatcherRelated topics
begin christian close collectivism degrading done fell far good human idea kindness leave less man milk once samaritan seen state taxpayer thief virtue willing wonder neighbourRelated quotes
The city is very different from the country, girl. It is a kind of shared consciousness that begins its work on you as soon as you enter it, if not well before, a consciousness that begins to separate you from the country possibly even before you decide to journey toward it. It encircles you with forces much greater than the walls and gates which imitate tinier villages or towns. People who come to it come seeking the future, not realizing all that will finally affect them in it is their own, only more or less aware, involvement with the past. The way we do things here-really, that's all there is to be learned in our precincts. But in the paving of every wide, clear avenue, in the turnings of every dark, overhung alley, in the ornaments on every cornice, in the salt-stained stones of each neighborhood cistern, there are traces of the way things once were done-which is the key to why they are done as they are today.
Samuel R. Delany
The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity. The company's success appeared to bear out the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorized that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields. In an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be ever more finely subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex skills, which would then be traded among workers. ... But however great the economic advantages of segmenting the elements of an afternoon's work into a range of forty-year-long careers, there was reason to wonder about the unintended side effects of doing so. In particular, one felt tempted to ask ... how meaningful the lives might feel as a result.
Alain de Botton
Novalis was cried down as an enthusiastic mystic by the prosaic, and Spinoza as godless by the literalists. It was incumbent upon me to protest against this view of Spinoza, seeing I would review the whole sphere of piety. Something essential would have been wanting in the ex position of my views if I had not in some way said that the mind and heart of this great man seemed deeply influenced by piety, even though it were not Christian piety. The result might have been different, had not the Christianity of that time been so distorted and obscured by dry formulas and vain subtilties that the divine form could not be expected to win the regard of a stranger. This I said in the first edition, somewhat youthfully indeed, yet so that I have found nothing now needing to be altered, for there was no reason to believe that I ascribed the Holy Spirit to Spinoza in the special Christian sense of the word.
Baruch Spinoza
If, therefore, our personal religious life is likely to be sapped by our devotion to social work, it would be a calamity second to none. But is it really likely that this will happen? The great aim underlying to whole social movement is the creation of a free, just, and brotherly social order. This is the greatest moral task conceivable. Its accomplishment is the manifest will of God for this generation. Every Christian motive is calling us to do it. If it is left undone, millions of lives will be condemned to a deepening moral degradation and to spiritual starvation. Does it look probable that we will lose our contact with God if we plunge too deeply into this work? Does it stand to reason that we shall go astray from Jesus Christ if we engage in the unequal conflict with organized wrong? What kind of ‘spirituality' is it which is likely to get hurt by being put to work for justice and our fellow-men?
Walter Rauschenbusch
If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure.
Berthe Morisot