“Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the love of money, regard for their families compelled them to keep an outlook for the pecuniary prizes of their calling. Poor fellows, theirs was indeed a trying business, preaching to men a generosity and unselfishness which they and everybody knew would, in the existing state of the world, reduce to poverty those who should practice them, laying down laws of conduct which the law of self-preservation compelled men to break.”

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 26.

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 "Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the lo…" by Edward Bellamy?

Edward Bellamy58

American author and socialist 1850–1898

Related quotes

“There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law.
"Obedience keeps the rules," he would say. "Love knows when to break them."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Revolution
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“We will not adopt the fantastic hypocrisy of modern conservatism which preaches the values of families and communities, while conducting a direct assault on them through reduced wages and conditions and job security.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Election campaign launch, February 14, 1996.

“Men were not created in order to obey laws. Laws are created to obey men. They are established by men and should serve men. The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society. There is no disagreements about this function of law in any circle-the disagreement arises from the question of which men laws are to serve. Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interest better. Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

"In Defense of Self-defense" I (June 20, 1967)
To Die For The People

“He distrusted all laws, even the best, while at the same time recognizing the necessity for them. For Joenes, a law took its goodness from the nature of the men who administered it. When the nature of those men changed, as Joenes believed was inevitable, then the nature of the law changed, too. When this happened, new laws and new lawgivers had to be found.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 16 “The End of the Journey” (p. 152)

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 147.
Source: The Cost of Discipleship

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p. 330
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

“The danger which threatened the natives in the future, at any rate in the mining districts, would arise from the desire to obtain a constant and cheap supply of native labour for the mines. It would be the duty of those in authority to guard the native against the oppressive laws which were in force in the Dutch Republics. In conclusion, he protested against a policy of harshness and violence in South Africa. We should try to inculcate forbearance, wisdom, and the generosity into the minds of those who had the government of the country.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Women's National Liberal Association Conference, Memorial Hall, London (12 June 1901), quoted in The Times (13 June 1901), p. 12.
1900s

“It cannot but occur to every person's observation, that as long as parties exist in the country (and perhaps it is for the good of the country that parties should exist to a certain degree, because they keep ministers on their guard in their conduct), they will have their friends and adherents. A great political character, who held a high situation in this country some years ago, but who is now dead, used to say that ministers were the better for being now and then a little peppered and salted. And while these parties exist, they will have their friendships and attainments, which will sometimes dispose them to wander from argument to declamation.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Holt's Case (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1234.

“I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 85

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Edward Bellamy58

Related quotes

Related topics