“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.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906–1945Related quotes
“The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.”
Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist
United States ex rel. Caminito v. Murphy, 222 F.2d 698, 706 (1955).
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse
"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32
Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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.
Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 214.