Commonplace Book

…truth is holy. It is one of God’s fundamental rules for human community. Without truth the community will fall into chaos and hell, into civil war and international wars. It is only on the basis of unconditional truth, of truth […]

Out of our faith in gold, we build ourselves the golden calf: Mammonism, capitalism, profit economy. And out of our drive toward power and violence and our faith in them, we develop militarism and imperialism. We revere the flag as […]

All things that have been tried for the sake of renewal…in these decisive times, whether by individuals or groups, all the new goals that have been presented, all the new life-styles that have been tried, all the faith, hope, and […]

We must distinguish between what we call politics and what we call religion (in the highest sense). Politics cannot exist without a struggle for worldly power, but religion (at any rate that religion which is in the spirit of Christ) […]

Socialism and the use of force stand in basic and sharp contradiction. Socialism is based on the fundamental belief in the worth and sacredness of man, and by that I mean of each person, even the least one–indeed, of him […]

From the mouths of those who attack religion we hear again and again that it is the worst of all evils that burden mankind. This is what the freethinkers, the social democrats, say, and this is what many democrats who […]

A powerful religious apparatus compensates for a lack of justice and love. One can oppress the stranger, the widow, and the orphan and yet find edification in one’s beautiful religion. “Here is the Lord’s temple, here is the Lord’s temple!” […]

I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that’s the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up–either religious or social laws–become meaningless. Things just get really dark. You lose those constraints, […]

In the Protestant age, the promotion of Christian virtue ran parallel to the promotion of democracy but usually could be distinguished from it. Bringing you to accept Jesus as your personal savior had nothing necessarily to do with bringing you […]

I had actually arrived at the conclusion that if there was any good life, and freedom from insecurity, and beauty, and knowledge, or leisure, then the men who did the world’s dirty, sweaty, toilsome, risky work, and the women who […]

But my faith in Socialism (to which I think I can say my entire life bears testimony) has remained more alive than ever in me. In its essence, it has gone back to what it was when I first revolted […]

And if my poor literary work has any meaning, in the ultimate analysis, it consists of this: a time came when writing meant, for me, an absolute necessity to testify, an urgent need to free myself from an obsession, to […]

…The traditional definition of “human” is composed of limits as much as privileges. To be properly human, there are some things we must not do. The opposing creed, dominant in our own time, holds that there are no limits. Anything […]

The racist argument has always been so simple as to need no comprehending. It simply divides the two categories, white people and black people, by a line theoretically straight, and opposes one category to the other. The actual history of […]

People who hate all Confederates, it seems to me, are oversimplifying themselves in order to do so. They seem to be war propogandists looking for a war, relishing the division of people into abstract or stereotypical categories of Good and […]

The trouble with anti-elitism is not that elites do not exist. It is that they exist everywhere, in every movement and party, on all sides. A mere revolt against elites makes a politics stupid. The important question is what the […]

If! Where are the believers who say if? In my own adventures in the religious life, nothing has disaffected me more than the certainty with which believers speak about occult entities and forces. The clarity is arrogant. But there is […]

I am talking with a former professor of mine. She is telling me that she believes that part of our job as teachers of undergraduates is to help our students, as she puts it, “instrumentalize” the things they learn from […]

“…Humanities departments have withered over the past two decades: smaller classes, fewer majors, and a shrinking faculty. A debacle. In part, it is owed to students voting with their feet: they think the jobs are elsewhere, so they gravitate to […]

It can be a pleasure to learn from the Internet, but you best have acquired your basic knowledge from something that is not the Internet. A book is a good idea; five hundred (good) books is better. If you do […]