“People continued — regardless of all that leads man forward — to try to unite the incompatibles : the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.”

— Leo Tolstoy , A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III

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

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Leo Tolstoy 456

Russian writer 1828–1910

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