“We must therefore look with grave misgivings upon the psychology of the ‘crusade’ or on the notion that we can make the world over in our own image either by persuasion or by coercion.”

—  Henry Steele Commager

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), pp. 70-71

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 "We must therefore look with grave misgivings upon the psychology of the ‘crusade’ or on the notion that we can make the…" by Henry Steele Commager?
Henry Steele Commager photo
Henry Steele Commager27
American historian 1902–1998

Related quotes

John Lancaster Spalding photo

“The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 31

Charles Kingsley photo

“Ah, my friends, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 257.

Stendhal photo

“In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Dans notre état, il faut opter; il s'agit de faire fortune dans ce monde ou dans l'autre, il n'y a pas de milieu.
Vol. I, ch. VIII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

“To be simple is to accept the essence of the message and not try to twist it or adapt it to our own ideas. To be simple we must desire to remain in the image of God. We must not be so complex that we make God into our image! Simplicity is dying to self, an emptying.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"For This I Have Laid Down My Life", p. 12
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

Sarah Grimké photo

“I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by bribery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

The “cause” was two-fold: abolition of slavery and establishment of women’s rights, especially suffrage. Some abolitionists and feminists thought it essential to win the support of clergymen.
Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Swami Vivekananda photo

“Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Thomas Watson photo

“O that we would therefore, while we are on this side of the grave, make our peace with God! Tomorrow may be our dying day; let this be our repenting day.”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

The Doctrine of Repentance (1668)

Karen Armstrong photo

“Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs. fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

Piero Manzoni photo

“Abstractions and references must be totally avoided. In our freedom of invention we must succeed in constructing a world that can be measured only in its own terms. We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space onto which to project our mental scenography. It is the area of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images. Images which are absolute as possible, which cannot be valued for that which they record, explain and express, but only for that which they are to be.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 18-19

“Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly—and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and cultural biases, psychological preferences, and mental limitations (in universal modes of thought, not just individualized stupidity).”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), p. 8

Related topics