Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist
Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 5.
Quoted variant: History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.
1970s, State of the Union Address (1975)
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist
Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 5.
R. K. Narayan (1906–2001) writer of Indian English literature
"Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians" at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html
Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) American writer
In a letter to Frederic George Young of the University of Oregon, as quoted in Women of the Gold Rush https://archive.org/stream/womenofgoldrusht00vict#page/n17/mode/2up
John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
Non-Progress: The myth of modernisation (p. 174)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)
Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit.
Precisely because moral culture is the aim, we cannot be content merely to lift the mass of mankind above the grosser forms of evil. We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known.
To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim.
We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them.
“Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.”
Francis Bacon book Novum Organum
Aphorism 20
Novum Organum (1620), Book II
“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, I Have A Dream (1963)
Context: I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.