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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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Whittaker Chambers
Age: 60 †
Born: 1901
Born: April 1
Died: 1961
Died: July 9
Editor
Journalist
Spy
Translator
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Life
Pain
Hangs
Understand
Wiser
True
Cross
Earth
Crosses
Children
Longer
Every
Child
Always
Upon
Men
Woman

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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Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.
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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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In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
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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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Man without mysticism is a monster.
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The satellite revolt was not sparked from the West. It was sparked by Communism itself.
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I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.
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Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.
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Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies.
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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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.
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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[It is b]etter to die on the losing side than to live under communisim.
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