“A land that rejects the truth, barricades itself against change and lacks the spirit of freedom is hopeless.”

Lona, Act IV
The Pillars of Society (1877)

Interview https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/02/27/inenglish/1519736544_699462.html, El País, 27/02/2018

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "The Power of Silence" (Chapter 18)

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15

Address, Kenyon College (April 4, 1957)

22 September 1907
India's Rebirth
Context: It is the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they were conceived. The spirit is permanent, the body changes; and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essentially the same but the body must change to suit its changing environments if it wishes to live. There is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth. By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present conditions.

Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man