Robert Hunter (author): Trending quotes (page 4)

“He [Tolstoy] seems to have felt somehow that social evolution was standing in his way. He did not like the division of labor. He hated all forms of commerce and trade. The State was an abomination in his eyes. He wanted it abolished and with it, indeed, all of modern society based upon machine industry. With Rousseau, he would go back to the primitive state.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 74

Hate , Way

“Fragments of information, indicative of a widespread poverty, fall under the following heads: Pauperism, the general distress, the number of evictions, the pauper burials; the overcrowding and insanitation due to improper housing; the death rate from tuberculosis; the amount of unemployment; and the number of accidents in certain trades. By means of such data as we have concerning these conditions, a partial, but of course a most imperfect, comparison can be made between the poverty of England and that of the United States.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 20

Death , Housing

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues…. Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered? In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind… And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Love , God , Truth , Soul

“There existed democratic aspirations, if not indeed a strong under-current of revolt, among the Jewish masses; and when it was said that the poor heard Jesus gladly, it was no doubt partly because he shared the views of these Old Testament prophets upon the iniquity of riches.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 88

Strong

“Even as late as the time of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris, lamentations arose over the injurious development which had changed the world from a wholesome rural and village life to a spotted fever of great cities and industrial hells.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 79

Life , World , Hell , Change

“In recent centuries the only near spiritual relative of Tolstoy is the English poet, who in the fourteenth century, in the form of Piers Plowman, preached religious ideas so strikingly like those of Tolstoy. They are both individualists and they seek individual, not social, regeneration. …Both point to the simple toiling God-fearing peasant as one expressing the ideal of the Christian life and service.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 29-30

Life , God , Fear , Idea

“He [Tolstoy] could see little good in the clergy, while he utterly condemned the military, the rulers of the earth, the judges, the capitalists, the landlords, the merchants, the jailers, the functionaries. He assailed modern art and classed artists with scientists and ministers as the lackeys of a degenerate and parasitic class of wealthy men. Political economists he considered as retainers of the same class and their product as the throwing of dust in the eyes of those who seek for a way out of our unhappy social conditions.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 77

Men , Art , Way

“To live miserable we know not why, to have the dread of hunger, to work sore and yet gain nothing—this is the essence of poverty.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 2

Hunger

“He [Tolstoy] did not believe in the political action advocated by the socialist party. He thought it futile to change the personnel of the Government, and it appeared to him that the making of new laws is an absurdity which could effect no change in conditions.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 72

Law , Appearance , Change

“Among them exists an immense opportunity for the spread of views such as Tolstoy held, but instead of espousing their cause or seeking in any manner to organize the peasants for cooperative action, he [Tolstoy] invariably taught them submission, nonresistance to evil, loyalty to their masters, and the most extreme form of Christian humility and service.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 69

Evil , Loyalty

“As we look into a clear pool and discern every detail of its sandy bottom, so may we often look into the minds of really great men.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 6

Men

“He [Tolstoy] turned upon those who are produced by its [the modern world's] wrongs and condemned socialists, revolutionists, trade unionists, feminists, coöperators, and all reformers and menders of the present order, including charity organizationists and almoners. The most hopeless one of all in the present day world is "the good man," who lives in comfort, helps the needy, attends service, and is utterly impervious to any real religion.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 77

World , Religion , Help

“Serfs and slaves were always given at least enough to keep them physically well. But present-day society has ignored the wisdom of this fair provision.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 8

Wisdom

“Whatever in the gospel will not interfere with what we like to do, or feel we must do, we gladly believe; and to the rest we close our eyes. Most of us do this half-unconsciously, perhaps, but in our innermost selves we can hardly help knowing that we are not Christians, and that there is in the gospel something fundamental—a vital message, an essence—which we do not wish to understand.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 7

Feeling , Understanding , Help

“To those… who see in certain underlying economic forces, the source of nearly all of our distressing social evils, individual hatred and malice can make in reality no appeal.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p.xii

Reality , Evil

“It is especially easy in our time to forget others, largely because of the conditions in modern society.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 22

Time , Forgetting

“Throughout Bakounin's writings there appears again and again the plea for "terrible, total, inexorable, and universal destruction.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p. 92

Universe , Appearance

“Without question, the causes, which produce on the one hand long hours and overemployment, result on the other hand in short periods of work, underemployment, or unemployment.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 28

Question

“Isaiah prophesied the coming of a revolution which would make men more precious than gold, and that a new nation would arise, wherein everyone should help his neighbor.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 85

Men , Help

“One of the signs that enable us to recognize the few great men who have lived in the world is this: they are nearly always able to state in clear, simple and concise language what they want to convey to the world.”

Robert Hunter (author)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 6

Men , World