Fragment 13 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
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Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)
Context: The saving of anyone is something which is not in the power of man, but only of God. No one can be saved — in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved — in virtue of what God can do. The divine claim takes the form that it puts both the obedient and the disobedient together and compels them to realise this, to recognise their common status in face of the commanding God.
“The United States is not going in there to save the oppressed.”
Interview by Michael Lerner in Tikkun, April 5, 1999 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19990405.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
Context: The United States is not going in there to save the oppressed. If we wanted to save the oppressed we could have supported the nonviolent movement instead of selling them out at Dayton. Any kind of turbulence in the Balkans is a threat to the interests of rich, privileged, powerful people. Therefore, any turbulence in the Balkans is called a crisis. The same circumstances would not be a crisis were they to occur in Sierra Leone, or Central America, or even Turkey. But in Europe, the heartland of American economic interests, any threat in the Balkans has the possibility of spilling over.
Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section III, p. 20
“Never a man unblemished virtue shows,
Save when he is the butt of fortune's blows.”
Non si conosce la virtu perfetta,
Se non quando fortuna ne saetta.
XXXI, 32
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato
"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)
Context: After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 10
“New ideas are the only evolutionary force that will save us from destruction.”
Spark (2014)
Context: True ideology has vanished, replaced by fear and fantasy. The right wing wants corporate control and a return to a past that never existed. The left wing wants government control and a future that will never exist. Both groups lose sight of the essential questions: how can the individual speak and think and create freely? New ideas are the only evolutionary force that will save us from destruction.
Rose
Titanic (1997)
Context: A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson, and that he saved me in every way that a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now only in my memory.
“We need a science to save us from science.”
NY Times Magazine, as reported in High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. 34 (1952), p. 46
1950s
