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
Ends
Pursuit
Fibers
Intelligence
Softening
General
Consequent
Liberty
Fiber
Pleasure
Widely
Happiness
Automatically
Freedom
Tends
Spirit
Replaced

More quotes by Whittaker Chambers

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A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences.
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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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In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.
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For in this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed.
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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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[It is b]etter to die on the losing side than to live under communisim.
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Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.
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Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.
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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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Man without mysticism is a monster.
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A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory
Whittaker Chambers
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Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.
Whittaker Chambers
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I do not know any way to explain why God's grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it.
Whittaker Chambers
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Life is not worth living for which a man is not prepared to die at any moment.
Whittaker Chambers
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In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
Whittaker Chambers
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It is in fact no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder that will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come.
Whittaker Chambers
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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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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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The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
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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