The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.
A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.
Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.