“In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity.”

—  Leo Tolstoy

What is Art? (1897)
Context: In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teachings of the ancient sages, and on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they found it impossible to continue to believe the Church teaching.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life…" by Leo Tolstoy?
Leo Tolstoy photo
Leo Tolstoy456
Russian writer 1828–1910

Related quotes

Leo Tolstoy photo

“Aesthetic theories arose one hundred fifty years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world. …And notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else's theory so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with such absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated by the educated and uneducated as though it were something indubitable and self-evident.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Leo Tolstoy photo

“Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i. e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Peter L. Berger photo

“Life-expectancies of lower-class and upper-class [vary] …society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live…”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

1991, p. 202
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

John C. Calhoun photo

“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious, and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20070123074414/http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.667/pub_detail.asp (12 August 1849) <br class="br">1840s

Thomas Carlyle photo

“There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Jeff Koons photo

“Abstraction and luxury are the guard dogs of the upper class. The upper class wants people to have ambition and gumption because, if you do, you will participate and you'll move through society into a different class structure.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

“After all, if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 76.

Noah Porter photo

“Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice.”

Noah Porter (1811–1892) American academic

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.

François-Noël Babeuf photo

“Education is a monstrosity when it is unequal, when it is the exclusive patrimony of one class of the society; because education then becomes the controlling hand of this class, a mass of mechanisms, a provision of weapons of all kinds, by which the ruling class combats the other class, which is disarmed.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

L'éducation est une monstruosité lorsqu'elle est inégale, lorsqu'elle est le patrimoine exclusif d'une portion de l'association; puisqu'alors elle devient la main de cette portion, un amas de machines, une provisions d'armes de toutes sortes, à l'aide desquelles cette première portion combat l'autre qui est désarmé.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 49, 27082 2892-7, Manifeste des Plébéien]
On education

“The rites of the church are expressions of our faith. As we all individually have differing histories and experiences, communities of Christians do as well. One will find subtle differences even between parishes. Jesus Christ founded one Catholic Church with fundamental truths and sacraments. He did not detail the way that should be experienced. History and geography have provided the alternate expressions. With a unified Catholic Church, our differences can be ways of understanding those truths and celebrating the sacraments while protecting their integrity.”

John Michael Kudrick (1947) Roman Catholic bishop

Source: Pope Francis &amp; Married Catholic Priests: Q&amp;A with Bishop John of Parma https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/pope-francis-married-catholic-priests-qa-bishop-john-parma (3 December 2014)

Related topics