200 quotes
The supreme need of the world today is for a true conception and a deeper knowledge of God. The Hindu mother tosses her baby to the crocodiles, the devout pilgrim mutilates his body, the pious monk retires to the wilderness, the martial Moslem massacres the unbelieving, the consecrated missionary lays down his life for his enemy—all of these deeds are founded on varying conceptions of God.
Taxation must be used as an instrument of social policy, but if carried too far under the profit system, it may be an instrument of destruction rather than construction.
Property (1935)
If individuals exercise the freedom to seek their own gain through competitive struggle and to acquire unlimited wealth and property, the result for most of the population will be bondage to destitution and insecurity.
Property (1935)
The economic and political power—and therefore police and military force—at the disposal of the owning class is almost illimitable, and is wielded with a ruthless determination to maintain privilege, prestige, and power.
Individualism and Socialism (1933)
The supreme task before the people of the United States today is the Americanizing and, above all, the Christianizing of the great cities of the country. ...It calls for consecrated leadership and prayer of the intensest sort.
War is not high ideals. War is not noble objectives. War is not gallant heroism. War is not sacrificial devotion.
Must We Go to War? (1937)
War is method. War is atrocity. War is wholesale falsehood. War is the practice of military necessity. War is the utter denial of the spirit and example of Jesus.
Must We Go to War? (1937)
To increase the number of men and women in all lands who will refuse absolutely to sanction the use of any unchristian weapon, who will follow without compromise the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and who will seek diligently by every possible means to spread abroad in the lives of individuals and of nations the spirit of Jesus, this is the only sure way to abolish war.
The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921)
To the degree that a man possesses a vivid ideal of the good life, submerges himself in the sea of human misery and endeavors to alleviate suffering, kindles imagination in hours of silence and by visions of beauty, and follows the noblest personality into the presence of a loving, suffering Father—to the extent that he lives meaningfully, he will be convinced of sin and cry aloud for deliverance.
Religious groups should exert themselves in behalf of the unemployed and should be zealous in defense of civil liberties, but they merely weaken their efforts when they enter into combinations with communists.
Property (1935)
Hatred is an essential part of war. During the conflict it is regarded as treason to "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you." In war, the enemy are regarded as targets, not as sons of God.
What is War? (1924)
The competitive struggle forces men and women to spend an excessive amount of time in the kitchen of life and thereby denies them maximum opportunity of appropriating the values of library, conservatory, chapel and living room.
Property (1935)
Preparedness to use atomic bombs against men and women and children is a proclamation of faith, a confession of confidence in the rightness and effectiveness of human slaughter as a means of seeking safety and of maintaining justice.
Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)
The profit motive and the competitive struggle are more productive and less destructive on the frontier than in the city. Maldistribution of income becomes more devastating with increasing complexity and interdependence.
Property (1935)
We must not expect too much from legislation, social service with the masses, or even preaching of the Gospel to large congregations. All of these have their advantages, but they also have their limitations. Nothing can adequately take the place of personal effort with individuals.
Feebleness of confidence in the power of international goodwill operating through appropriate agencies of international justice and friendship is at present paralyzing efforts to take the steps which must be taken if war is to be averted.
Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)
The police take action against the criminal himself; not against his family and friends. War does not deal merely with the guilty men but destroys multitudes of innocent people; indeed, it does far more damage to the innocent than to the guilty.
What is War? (1924)
Surely, with so much at stake for the entire human race, the only place for the United States is in the vanguard of the movement to substitute international law for international violence, international agencies of justice for international anarchy.
An American Peace Policy (1925)
God is Father of all mankind and is seeking to create a community in which His children will dwell together harmoniously and cooperatively as beloved kinsmen. Therefore attitudes and practices which debase personality or embitter human relations must be avoided.
Property (1935)
Plenty for everyone can be provided in the United States if the anarchistic economic freedom of the frontier is renounced and replaced by the higher freedom of collectivism, through the socialization of the basic industries and the approximate equalization of economic privilege.
Property (1935)