“The antagonism between nationalities will lose all its acuteness on the day when neither the iniquitous tendency to oppression and domination, nor the perpetual danger of the threatening preparations for war will exist.”

—  African Spir

"L'antagonisme entre les nationalités perdra toute son acuité le jour où n'existera plus la tendance inique à l'oppression et à la domination, ni le perpétuel danger des menaçants préparatifs de guerre. », Fr. "
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 54.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The antagonism between nationalities will lose all its acuteness on the day when neither the iniquitous tendency to opp…" by African Spir?
African Spir photo
African Spir 98
Russian philosopher 1837–1890

Related quotes

Kanō Jigorō photo

“The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

Vladimir Lenin photo
Taylor Caldwell photo

“You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

The Devil's Advocate (1952)
1950s
Context: You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56

William Mulock photo

“Watch every tendency towards militarism, for we know that preparation for war leads to war.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

Opening the Canadian National Exhibition, The Globe, 29 August 1906, page 1.

Peter Kropotkin photo

“They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallize what should be modified and developed day by day.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), I
Context: Men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed. Rebels are everywhere to be found who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of society which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law.
The critics analyze the sources of law, and find there either a god, product of the terrors of the savage, and stupid, paltry, and malicious as the priests who vouch for its supernatural origin, or else, bloodshed, conquest by fire and sword. They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallize what should be modified and developed day by day.

Theodore Roosevelt photo
African Spir photo
Franz Liszt photo

Related topics