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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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Whittaker Chambers
Age: 60 †
Born: 1901
Born: April 1
Died: 1961
Died: July 9
Editor
Journalist
Spy
Translator
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Call
Symptoms
Fact
Communism
Facts
Solution
Whole
Popular
World
Claims
Solutions
Irritant
Western
Irritants
Crisis
Symptom

More quotes by 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.
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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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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.
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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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Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.
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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Man without mysticism is a monster.
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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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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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Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.
Whittaker Chambers
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[It is b]etter to die on the losing side than to live under communisim.
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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In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
Whittaker Chambers
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On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time - Communism and Freedom - came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men.
Whittaker Chambers
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A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory
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
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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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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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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.
Whittaker Chambers
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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.
Whittaker Chambers