“The decline of the churches was a sweeping social revolution, because they had done more than any other institution, public or private, to civilise Australians.”

A Shorter History of Australia (1994)

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Geoffrey Blainey72

Australian historian 1930

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“But someone is bound to question … by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are ‘public’ or ‘private’. What matters is how they function.”

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“Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.”

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John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

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“More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.”

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Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 23 (p. 310)
Context: “What do you want, Blade. Why are you doing this?”
He shrugged, an uncharacteristic action. “There are many evils in the world. I guess I’ve chosen one for my personal crusade.”
“Why such a hatred for priests?”
He didn’t shrug. He didn’t give me a straight answer, either. “If each man picks an evil and attacks it relentlessly, how long can evil persist?”
That was an easy one. Forever. More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way. Few villains think they are villains. But I left him his illusion. If he had one. I doubted he did. No more than a sword’s blade does.

“Q: Why do I stay in the Catholic Church?
A: I stay in the Church because the Church is more than its ignorance; the Church gives me more than it denies me. I stay in the Church because it is mine.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

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“From the nation they draw all the benefits of civilisation, enlightenment, progress, and social and political institutions, as well as advances in the arts and sciences.”

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Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 4 : From Principles to Problems

“Capitalism had been more revolutionary then any previous social system. It had swept away without scruples old institutions and modes of thought, if they were found to stand in its way.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

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“It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

To the 1864 general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln : A History Vol. 6 (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, Ch. 15, p. 324
1860s

“Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?
Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

“The decline of the churches was a sweeping social revolution, because they had done more than any other institution, public or private, to civilise Australians.”

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Geoffrey Blainey72

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