“The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.”
Source: Inner Experience
“No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.”
Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 80
Context: A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism. The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor "anti-Capitalist". It will recognize the truth in liberal democracy, and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism and Marxism does not entail an enmity towards Soviet Russia, just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west. … But the final and most important justification of a "third way" is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth, love and justice. No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth." by Nikolai Berdyaev?
Nikolai Berdyaev 33
Russian philosopher 1874–1948Related quotes
“Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
Were the truths of long ago.”
John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery
Calef in Boston, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Joachim Peiper
(1915–1976) SS officer
Peiper on the Malmedy massacre, excerpted from A Traveler's Guide to the Battle for the German Frontier by Charles Whiting.
Lenny Bruce
(1925–1966) comedian and social critic
as quoted by Paul Krassner in Lenny Bruce: Swear to tell the truth 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/
Benjamin Fish Austin
(1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist
Sermon (1899)
“Accept no substitutes; I bring truth to the youth.”
Tupac Shakur
(1971–1996) rapper and actor
"Holla If Ya Hear Me" http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/2pac/hollaifyahearme.html (1993).
1990s
Elbert Hubbard
(1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
The Better Part (1901)
Context: Mankind is governed by the worst — the strongest example of this is to be seen in American municipalities, but it is true of every government. We are governed by rogues who hold their grip upon us by and through statute law. Were it not for law the people could protect themselves against these thieves, but now we are powerless and are robbed legally. One mild form of coercion these rogues resort to is to call us unpatriotic when we speak the truth about them. Not long ago they would have cut off our heads. The world moves. Governments cannot be done away with instantaneously, but progress will come, as it has in the past by lessening the number of laws. We want less governing, and the ideal government will arrive when there is no government at all.
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs. So long as men are clubbed, robbed, imprisoned, disgraced, hanged by the governing class, just so long will the idea of violence and brutality be born in the souls of men.