“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”

Variant: The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer 161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906–1945

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“The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.”

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“…thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity.”

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“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), as quoted in Milan Kundera (2003) by Harold Bloom, [//books.google.it/books?id=SXDojRJFMPIC&pg=PA91 p. 91]
Context: True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

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