Quote

The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.

Whittaker Chambers

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Whittaker Chambers
Age: 60 †
Born: 1901
Born: April 1
Died: 1961
Died: July 9
Editor
Journalist
Spy
Translator
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
General
Consequent
Liberty
Fiber
Pleasure
Widely
Automatically
Happiness
Tends
Freedom
Replaced
Spirit
Pursuit
Fibers
Ends
Intelligence
Softening

More quotes by Whittaker Chambers

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Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.
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Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.
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Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.
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... my century.. is unique in the history of men for two reasons. It is the first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God. And it is the century in which this religious rejection has taken a specifically political form.
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A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory
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At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.
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The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
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The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.
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I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
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Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.
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My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.
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When you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wiser.
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True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.
Whittaker Chambers
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In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.
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Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.
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I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
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A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between irreconcilable opposites-God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism.
Whittaker Chambers
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It is popular to call it a crisis of the Western world. It is in fact a crisis of the whole world. Communism, which claims to be a solution of the crisis, is itself a symptom and an irritant of the crisis.
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In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
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On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.
Whittaker Chambers