“Was all human endeavor then, even the beautiful of the world, of so little consequence compared with murder?”

— Halldór Laxness

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

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 "Was all human endeavor then, even the beautiful of the world, of so little consequence compared with murder?" by Halldór Laxness?

Halldór Laxness 216

Icelandic author 1902–1998

Related quotes

“It was a slow and brutal death for so many…Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

President Trump on Syria's chemical weapons attack, "President Trump blasts Syria for 'cruelly murdering' its own people as U.S. fires at least 50 missiles at airfield" http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-blasts-syria-murdering-civilians-u-s-strike-article-1.3027449, 6 April 2017.
2010s, 2017, April

“So minuscule is the scale of quantum events compared to the actions of everyday life that it's a wonder humans ever found out about the quantum world at all.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 8, "And Then A Miracle Occurs": The Quantum Measurement Problem, p. 150

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to the minister of a church in Brooklyn (20 November 1950), p. 95. The minister had earlier written Einstein asking if he would send him a signed version of a quote about the Catholic church attributed to Einstein in Time magazine (see the "Misattributed" section below), and Einstein had written back to say the quote was not correct, but that he was "gladly willing to write something else which would suit your purpose". According to the book, the minister replied "saying he was glad the statement had not been correct since he too had reservations about the historical role of the Church at large", and said that "he would leave the decision to Einstein as to the topic of the statement", to which Einstein replied with the statement above.
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

“Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Interview (23 September 1966), published posthumously in Der Spiegel (31 May 1976), as translated by Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo in The Heidegger Controversy : A Critical Reader (1991), edited by Richard Wolin.
Context: Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering [Untergang] for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us.