Kirby Page Quotes

222 Sourced Quotes

By his own experience of God and his estimate of man, by his emphasis upon and practice of brotherhood, by his repudiation of hatred and violence, while attacking with audacity deeply entrenched inequities, and by his vicarious suffering on the cross, Jesus awakens, challenges and inspires us to take up the cross and follow in his sacrificially redemptive steps. Thus we are saved and thus society must be redeemed.

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A Christian is never justified in following a course of action that is utterly opposed to the principles of the Kingdom, not even to serve the temporal well being of family or nation.

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We gain illumination as to the immensity of Jesus' contribution in setting before us a vision of the new society, and indicating ways and means of bringing it to pass.

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It is possible to deal with criminal rulers or officials by strengthening the liberal forces within that country.

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As long as ministers and laymen labor under the delusion that contemporary Christianity is the same religion that Jesus practiced they will remain immunized against his way of life and will lack the vision.

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Should a patriot, in an endeavor to defend his country and to preserve high values, be willing to perpetrate atrocities upon women and children of other lands, accept the doctrine that the end justifies the means, follow the practice of military necessity, inflame passions through distortion and falsehood, bow down before a god of war, and forsake the way of Jesus?

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Our difficulty comes, of course, in deciding where ethical coercion ends and unethical violence begins. The only person who is able to escape from this dilemma is the complete anarchist who repudiates every form of restraint and compassion—and such a man has no solution to offer for the imminently menacing problems of the hour. All other persons are obliged to draw the line somewhere, and orderly progress depends upon intellectual keenness and ethical sensitiveness with which the situation is confronted.

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The supreme need of the world today is for a true conception and a deeper knowledge of God. The Hindu mother tosses her baby to the crocodiles, the devout pilgrim mutilates his body, the pious monk retires to the wilderness, the martial Moslem massacres the unbelieving, the consecrated missionary lays down his life for his enemy—all of these deeds are founded on varying conceptions of God.

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Shall we resort to violence, on the ground that the end justifies the mean? The answer of Jesus seems conclusive. There is no place in the home for violence—as distinguished from less extreme forms of coercion—and the killing of beloved kinsmen.

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Of all the founders of great religions, Jesus alone proclaimed one God, immanent and powerful, holy and righteous, a loving and seeking Father, concerned about the welfare of each of his children.

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Before a just society can be established the property system and the penal code of such a social order must be radically transformed.

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Supporters of the American plan of outlawry and advocates of the League are alike agreed... that new international law should be enacted and that a constantly recurring series of international conferences will be required if codification is to be kept up to date.

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Asceticism may offer a way of escape from the temptations that come from association with one's fellows and bring a sense of release and contentment. But the universal family can never be built by hermits. Contact may lead to contamination, but it is essential to redemption. Love never flees from the object of its affection. Where pain is most severe and sorrow most bitter, there love is most solicitous and untiring.

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The earliest authority was the word of the strongest warrior, the head of the family or the tribe, the medicine man or the witch doctor.

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The police take action against the criminal himself; not against his family and friends. War does not deal merely with the guilty men but destroys multitudes of innocent people; indeed, it does far more damage to the innocent than to the guilty.

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Jesus was a radical on race questions. He treated men of every color and tongue as sons of a common Father and therefore brothers beloved. In His sight all men are of inherent and inestimable value.... Jesus also disregarded the rigid class lines of his day.

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When we are reminded of his apocalyptic concepts and are told that an interim ethic possesses little validity for distant centuries, we are able to make rejoinder that his experience of God, his valuation of man, his call to love, forgiveness, and sacrifice are universal and eternal.

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Bombardment, air raid and blockade constitute the most revolting forms of atrocity because they are not deeds of violence committed under the momentary, blinding influence of fear or passion, but are deliberately premeditated processes of devastation, mutilation and slaughter of men, women and children without regard to guilt or responsibility.

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There is no inherent irreconcilability between love and coercion, but rather the reverse; under some circumstances love ceases to be love if it fails to use moral means of restraint.

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Once war consisted of individual combats between armed men. Later it was waged between lines of men in opposing trenches. Now it is organized slaughter of whole populations.

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Shall we use the weapons of violence and bloodshed or is there a more effective weapon available?

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Enemies are at work day and night in the material realm. Chief among these are ignorance, carelessness, and greed. Operating independently or together, they have wrought enormous destruction.

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For a powerful nation like the United States to continue its insistence upon absolute sovereignty and to refuse to cooperate in creating effective international agencies of justice, is to obstruct the pathway that leads away from international chaos and destruction.

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The victims of greed and exploitation will never get justice solely by relying upon the vision and generosity of those who hold power and seek their own gain. Power is blinding and corrupting and causes the slave-owner to imagine that it is his duty to perpetuate slavery. The victims of imperialism, in a world where national egotism and greed are rampant, must resort to coercive action if they are to secure freedom and justice.

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The political horizon would be greatly clarified if the voters were offered the choice of three parties representing three strategies: A conservative party committed to the preservation of individualism, perhaps in a highly modified form; a communist party bent upon revolutionary changes through violent seizure of power, confiscation, and a proletarian dictatorship; and a radical party seeking to socialize the basic industries and to move toward an equalization of economic privilege through purchase, taxation, and drastic regulation, without resorting to confiscation or armed seizure of power.

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To depend upon mutual aid is right. It is better to run the risks of doing right.

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As was the case with him [Jesus], the Christian militant should lose sight of temporary suffering and persecution in seeking to advance the ultimate well-being of mankind. He should recognize that it was this long distance view of time that compelled Jesus to refuse the sword and to make no military effort to bring about the immediate political freedom of his people, and that it was this same vision that caused him to choose the way of the cross and to go down in defeat, as the world measures success. And if the Christian militant is to be true to the Master, he must also choose the way of the cross and must follow Jesus even though the path lead to seeming defeat.

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Jesus had little to say about political freedom, he had much to say about moral and spiritual freedom. When confronted with the question of human freedom, he saw that unless men's hearts were changed, freedom from Rome would simply mean an exchange of masters. To destroy the oppressors of a nation is not Jesus' way of bringing freedom to its citizens. Real freedom is not a racial, national or international problem; it is personal.

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Communists have nothing but contempt for religion and for pacifism. They use the united front as a means of boring from within.

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Feebleness of confidence in the power of international goodwill operating through appropriate agencies of international justice and friendship is at present paralyzing efforts to take the steps which must be taken if war is to be averted.

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