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The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.

William Ralph Inge

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William Ralph Inge
Obstacles
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Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.
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Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.
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A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.
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In imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge if he treats them well, and governs them for their good, they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence.
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There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. 'You forget,' said the Devil, with a chuckle, 'that I have been evolving too.
William Ralph Inge
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Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.
William Ralph Inge
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It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.
William Ralph Inge
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Beautiful thoughts hardly bring us to God until they are acted upon. No one can have a true idea of right until he does it.
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Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.
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No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
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Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.
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Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is a mechanism which has created conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.
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Originality, I fear, is too often only undetected and frequently unconscious plagiarism.
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The enemies of freedom do not argue they shout and they shoot.
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Joy is the triumph of life it is the sign that we are living our true life as spiritual beings.
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We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.
William Ralph Inge
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Our test is infallible. Whatever view of reality deepens our sense of the tremendous issues of life in the world wherein we move, is for us nearer the truth than any view which diminishes that sense.
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Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
William Ralph Inge
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We should think of the church as an orchestra in which the different churches play on different instruments while a Divine Conductor calls the tune.
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Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
William Ralph Inge