Quote

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.

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
Life
Experience
Innocence
Blameless
Like
Doe
Tone
Calmly
Find
Guilt
Outraged
Look
Likely
Shield
Nothing
Answer
Shields
Looks
Answers
Mighty
Much
Taught
Seldom
Men
Woman
Covered
Utters

More quotes by Whittaker Chambers

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A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory
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.
Whittaker Chambers
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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.
Whittaker Chambers
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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
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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.
Whittaker Chambers
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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.
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.
Whittaker Chambers
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Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.
Whittaker Chambers
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In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
Whittaker Chambers
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I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
Whittaker Chambers
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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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Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does.
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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The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
Whittaker Chambers
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Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.
Whittaker Chambers
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Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.
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.
Whittaker Chambers
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The satellite revolt was not sparked from the West. It was sparked by Communism itself.
Whittaker Chambers
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The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.
Whittaker Chambers
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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