Whittaker Chambers Quotes (33 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

Witness

Whittaker Chambers

Witness

Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers: 33 quotes1 like

Famous Whittaker Chambers Quotes

“[Stalin's] purge caused me to examine the meaning of Communism…. I had always known of course that there were books critical of Communism…. I had never read them because I knew that the party did not want me to read them….. the first book I read… was called I Speak for the Silent [by] Professor Vladimir Tchernavin…. He was a little man in the Communist world, gentle, humane, good…. Suddenly for no reason at all he was arrested and carried away by the secret police…. Now for the first time, I believed that slave labor camps existed…. I said ‘this is evil, absolute evil. Of this evil I am a part.’ … If Communism were evil, what was left but moral chaos? …. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind – the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul….”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 79-83

“Die goldene Medina. The accent was not on the golden (except in the sense of some mysterious Light), but on the Medina - that is, the city of hope, the city of deliverance. (p. 281)”

Whittaker Chambers

Cold Friday (1964)

“A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Cold Friday (1964), p. 40

“A man is not primarily a witness against something.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 5

“Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies… At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 4

“In the 20th Century, treason became a vocation whose modern form was specifically the treason of ideas. ("The Circles of Perdition," December 8, 1947)”

Whittaker Chambers

TIME magazine (1939-1948)

Whittaker Chambers Quotes about time

“Once upon a time, when the Yewnited States was just a little shaver among the nations, but already very spoiled along the literate Eastern fringes, there lived younder in Tennessee a lovable old man with a tongue like a rat-tailed file and a face so hard they called him Old Hickory.”

Whittaker Chambers

"The Old Deal," October 22, 1945
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“Then he asked in German (the only language that we ever spoke): "Ist die Sowjetregierung eine faschistische Regierung? - Is the Soviet Government a fascist government?"… I sat silent for some moments. Then I said: "Ja, die Sowjetregierung ist eine faschistische Regierung - the Soviet Government is a fascist government"… Krivitsky turned for the first time and looked at me directly. "Du hast recht," he said, "und Kronstadt war der Wendepunkt”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

You are right, and Kronstadt was the turning point." (pp. 459-460)
Witness (1952)

“The Hiss Case has turned my wife and me into old people - not a disagreeable condition. But we who used to plan in terms of decades, now find a year, two years, the utmost span of time we can take in.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 798

“The last war simplified the balance of political forces in the world by reducing them to two. For the first time, it made the power of the Communist sector of mankind (embodied in the Soviet Union) roughly equal to the power of the free sector of mankind (embodied in the United States). It made the collision of these powers all but inevitable. For the world wars did not end the crisis. They raised its tensions to a new pitch. They raised the crisis to a new stage. All the politics of our time, including the politics of war, will be the politics of this crisis.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 7

“Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 25

“No one mentioned Communism or the Hiss Case until we sat over our coffee in the living room. Mrs. Philip Jessup had just used her personal good offices to try to get me off TIME. Luce was baffled by the implacable clamor of the most enlightened people against me. "By any Marxian pattern of how classes behave," he said, "the upper class should be for you and the lower classes should be against you. But it is the upper class that is most violent against you. How do you explain that?" "You don't understand the class structure of American society," said Smetana, "or you would not ask such a question. In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p.616

Whittaker Chambers Quotes

“Reinhold Niebuhr's new orthodoxy is the oldtime religion put through the intellectual wringer. It is a re-examination of orthodoxy for an age dominated by such trends as rationalism, liberalism, Marxism, fascism, idealism and the idea of progress.”

Whittaker Chambers

TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“The story has spread that in testifying against Mr. Hiss I am working out some old grudge, or motives or revenge or hatred. I do not hate Mr. Hiss. We were close friends, but we are caught in a tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting. I have testified against him with remorse and pity, but in a moment of history in which this Nation now stands, so help me God, I could not do otherwise.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

televised testimony of August 25, 1948
Source: Witness (1952), pp. 694-695

“When the train of history makes a sharp turn, said Lenin, the passengers who do not have a good grip on their seats are thrown off. Last week the Communist Limited had just about completed the dizzy turn from the Communazi Pact to the Battle of Britain, and U. S. literary liberals were spattered all over the right of way.”

Whittaker Chambers

"Revolt of the Intellectuals," January 6, 1941
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“The satellite revolt was not sparked from the West. It was sparked by Communism itself.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Cold Friday (1964), p. 315

“Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 4-5

“In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. I began to break away from Communism and to climb from deep within its underground, where for six years I had been buried, back into the world of free men.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 25

“I wanted my wife to realize clearly one long-term penalty, for herself and for the children, of the step I was taking. I said: "You know, we are leaving the winning world for the losing world."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 25

“I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure because it is necessary.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 456

“Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Cold Friday (1964), p. 186

“The Wizard of Oz (M. G. M.) should settle an old Hollywood controversy: whether fantasy can be presented on the screen as successfully with human actors as with cartoons. ("The New Pictures," August 21, 1939)”

Whittaker Chambers

TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“Toscanini was hailing a great artist, but that voice was more than a magnificent personal talent. It was the religious voice of a whole religious people — probably the most God-obsessed (and man-despised) people since the ancient Hebrews.”

Whittaker Chambers

"In Egypt Land," December 30, 1946
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“What statesmanship! What vision! What power! We have known nothing like it since my ancestor, Peter the Great, broke a window into Europe by overrunning the Baltic states in the 18th Century. Stalin has made Russia great again!”

Whittaker Chambers

"The Ghosts on the Roof," March 5, 1945
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“Now, the Communists recognized at once (or, more probably, after they had stirred things up a bit) that Senator McCarthy is a political godsend.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Odyssey of a Friend (1969), p. 57

“The book begins with the clang of a cell door closing in a GPU prison. It ends with a shot in the back of the head in a murky passageway of the prison cellar. It moves with the speed, directness, precision and some of the impact of a bullet.”

Whittaker Chambers

"Brightest in Dungeons," May 26, 1941
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“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

Source: Odyssey of a Friend (1969), p. 52

“The Columbia faculty was not, of course, composed wholly of young skeptics and esthetes. By any count of academic noses, they were a small minority.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Cold Friday (1964), p. 119

“Conservatism is alien to the very nature of capitalism.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Odyssey of a Friend (1969), p. 229

“All children are afraid of the night; when they grow up, they are still afraid, but more afraid of admitting it. ("Night Thoughts," May 8, 1939)”

Whittaker Chambers

TIME magazine (1939-1948)

“My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear-those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 16

“Lenin was a Great Russian peasant et rien de plus, mais r-r-rien de plus. Oh yes, he was a dialectician, the only true one among them. But most of all he was a Russian and that is to be a peasant.”

Whittaker Chambers

Source: Notes from the Underground (1997), p. 274

“He was a Southerner with the fine abandon some Southerners have about firearms and related matters. "Well, sir," he said with immense pleasure, "you've bought the right gun. Just hold it in front of you, squeeze the trigger, and, brother, it will be fay-ya-you-well."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 58

Similar authors

Mikhail Gorbachev65

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union None

Fidel Castro77

former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President… None

Mao Zedong181

Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of… None

Joseph Stalin95

General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union None

Czeslaw Milosz106

Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator None

Henri Barbusse197

French novelist None

Vladimir Lenin336

Russian politician, led the October Revolution None

Helder Camara4

Brazilian Catholic priest, archbishop of Olinda and Recife None

Milan Kundera198

Czech author of Czech and French literature None

Vladimir Mayakovsky14

Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and f… None

Similar authors

Mikhail Gorbachev65

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union None

Fidel Castro77

former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President… None

Mao Zedong181

Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of… None

Joseph Stalin95

General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union None

Czeslaw Milosz106

Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator None