Arthur Keith Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.

Arthur Keith
The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

Arthur Keith
Good men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses.

Arthur Keith
Nowhere is Universalism welcomed and encouraged by a people; everywhere governments have forced and are forcing Universalism upon unwilling and resistant subjects.

Arthur Keith
Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole.

Arthur Keith
It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms.

Arthur Keith
In a tribal organization, even in time of peace, service to tribe or state predominates over all self seeking; in war, service for the tribe or state becomes supreme, and personal liberty is suspended.

Arthur Keith
Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.

Arthur Keith
Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

Arthur Keith
I prize the conditions under which I have lived because they have permitted me to choose my opportunities, to inquire into such matters as interested me, and to publish what I believed to be true, uncontrolled by any central authority.

Arthur Keith
A drunkard is one thing, and a temperate man is quite another.

Arthur Keith
Tribal life comes automatically to an end when a primitive people begins to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city.

Arthur Keith
In every man there is an instinctive and passionate reaction if his person or liberty is attacked.

Arthur Keith
There are the further difficulties of building a population out of a diversity of races, each at a different stage of cultural evolution, some in need of restraint, many in need of protection; everywhere a bewildering Babel of tongues.

Arthur Keith
Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent.

Arthur Keith
Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.

Arthur Keith
Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution.

Arthur Keith
There are very few men and women in whom a Universalist feeling is altogether lacking; its prevalence suggests that it must be part of our inborn nature and have a place in Nature's scheme of evolution.

Arthur Keith
Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature's cupboard for their satisfaction.

Arthur Keith
The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.

Arthur Keith
Universalism as an ideal is as old as nay, is probably much more ancient than the Christian ideal.

Arthur Keith
I can see only an individuality of the continent, its unity, and also its permanence of environment, and I see nothing of the haphazard arrangement which must have followed the random course of a continent floating like a waif on a sea of sial.

Arthur Keith
We shall never understand the ethical system taught by Jesus unless we realize that he was a Jew, not only by birth, but that he lived and taught as a Jew; the Sermon on the Mount was addressed to his distracted fellow nationals.

Arthur Keith
Religious leaders and men of science have the same ideals; they want to understand and explain the universe of which they are part; they both earnestly desire to solve, if a solution be ever possible, that great riddle: Why are we here?

Arthur Keith
Before the discovery of agriculture mankind was everywhere so divided, the size of each group being determined by the natural fertility of its locality.

Arthur Keith
Man is by nature competitive, combative, ambitious, jealous, envious, and vengeful.

Arthur Keith
Tolerance is held to be a condition of mind which is encouraged by, and is necessary for, civilization.

Arthur Keith
My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

Arthur Keith
The proper balance between individual liberty and central authority is a very ancient problem.

Arthur Keith