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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.

Hu Shih

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Hu Shih
Age: 70 †
Born: 1891
Born: December 17
Died: 1962
Died: February 24
Diplomat
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
Shanghai
China
Hu Shi
Elements
Worthlessness
Understood
Critically
Comparison
Value
Relative
Seen
Cultural
Values
Contact
Clearly
Various

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India Conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.
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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.
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But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.
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Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.
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Historically, there had been many periods of Chinese Renaissance.
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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.
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The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.
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The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die.
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Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.
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Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic.
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The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.
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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.
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And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.
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In such diffused changes of culture two factors are necessary: contact and understanding.
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