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The true basis of morality is utility that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

Annie Besant

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Annie Besant
Age: 86 †
Born: 1847
Born: January 1
Died: 1933
Died: January 1
Editor
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Member Of The London School Board
Orator
Politician
Suffragist
Theosophist
Writer
London
England
Annie Wood Besant
Annie Wood
Annie Besant
May
Morality
Utility
Rule
Promotion
General
Bless
Mankind
Welfare
Happiness
Basis
Lives
Bases
Action
Serve
Endeavour
True
Actions
Adaptation

More quotes by Annie Besant

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In the light of reincarnation life changes its aspect, for it becomes the school of the eternal Man within us, who seeks therein his development, the Man that was and is and shall be, for whom the hour will never strike.
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Belief in karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the soul that by wisdom has gained power and uses both in love.
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The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration at death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality.
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Sun-worship and pure forms of nature-worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge.
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For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.
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You should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.
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The Atheist waits for proof of God. Till that proof comes he remains, as his name implies, without God. His mind is open to every new truth, after it has passed the warder Reason at the gate.
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Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.
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Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining.
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The generous wish to share with all what is precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to shut out none from the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a zeal without discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has presented its teachings in a form that often repels the heart and alienates the intellect.
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This Old Testament - containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality - is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy - if there were anyone to be blasphemed - blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.
Annie Besant
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'Nature is conquered by obedience' - and her resistless energies are at our bidding, as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success.
Annie Besant
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The position of the Atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about ‘God’ and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it what you tell me about your God is self‐contradictory, and therefore incredible. I do not deny ‘God,’ which is an unknown tongue to me I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.
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Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
Annie Besant
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Continents may break up, continents may emerge, but the human race is immortal in its origin and in its growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even if the foundations of the earth be moved.
Annie Besant
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There is much, of course, in the exclusive claims of Christianity which make it hostile to other faiths.
Annie Besant
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There is no birthright in the white skin that it shall say that wherever it goes, to any nation, amongst any people, there the people of the country shall give way before it, and those to whom the land belongs shall bow down and become its servants.
Annie Besant
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The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the astral form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it.
Annie Besant
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Representative institutions are as much a part of the true Briton as his language and his literature.
Annie Besant
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We were an ill-matched pair, my husband and I, from the very outset he, with very high ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the 'master-in-my-own-house theory,' thinking much of the details of home arrangements, precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty appeased.
Annie Besant