Robert Hunter (author) Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

Whatever in the gospel will not interfere with what we like to do, or feel we must do, we gladly believe; and to the rest we close our eyes. Most of us do this half-unconsciously, perhaps, but in our innermost selves we can hardly help knowing that we are not Christians, and that there is in the gospel something fundamental—a vital message, an essence—which we do not wish to understand.

Robert Hunter
To those... who see in certain underlying economic forces, the source of nearly all of our distressing social evils, individual hatred and malice can make in reality no appeal.

Robert Hunter
Even as late as the time of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris, lamentations arose over the injurious development which had changed the world from a wholesome rural and village life to a spotted fever of great cities and industrial hells.

Robert Hunter
Although Tolstoy in his protest recognized the fact that he was bound up with all others, neither this nor the knowledge of his individual helplessness induced him to work with others in order to change any part of the infamous governmental system of Russia.

Robert Hunter
If it is impossible to induce fathers to abandon their families, how much more impossible would it be to induce mothers? When Tolstoy sought to live the truly Christian life, the immediate obstacle he found in his path was his own wife.... The next world had to take care of itself. She was burdened with dependents in this world, and like nearly every other mother-animal in creation, she insisted, in so far as she was able, upon feeding and protecting her young. She was as impervious as a tigress, concealing the lair of her young, to the teaching that a Christian must be willing to sacrifice everything and everybody in pursuit of truth.

Robert Hunter
Fragments of information, indicative of a widespread poverty, fall under the following heads: Pauperism, the general distress, the number of evictions, the pauper burials; the overcrowding and insanitation due to improper housing; the death rate from tuberculosis; the amount of unemployment; and the number of accidents in certain trades. By means of such data as we have concerning these conditions, a partial, but of course a most imperfect, comparison can be made between the poverty of England and that of the United States.

Robert Hunter
Both socialists and anarchists preach their gospel to the weary and heavy-laden, to the despondent and the outraged, who may readily be led to commit acts of despair. They have, after all, little to lose, and their life, at present unbearable, can be made little worse by punishment. Yet millions of the miserable have come into the socialist movement to hear the fiercest of indictments against capitalism, and it is but rare that one becomes a terrorist. What else than the teachings of anarchism and of socialism can explain this difference?

Robert Hunter
While seeking his true relation to the infinite, Tolstoy was also seeking his true relation to mankind.

Robert Hunter
Serfs and slaves were always given at least enough to keep them physically well. But present-day society has ignored the wisdom of this fair provision.

Robert Hunter
Unquestionably socialism and anarchism attract distinctly different types, who are in many ways alien to each other. Their mental processes differ.

Robert Hunter
His [Tolstoy's] interpretation of the Christian teaching is very similar to that which prevailed in nearly every peasant community in western Europe in the Middle Ages. Like doctrines gave rise to a peasant movement in Armenia in the ninth century, and in the fourteenth; a revolt of the peasants in England resulted from the teaching of the Lollards. The Anabaptists, the Hussites, and many other sects of Christian communists arose in the following centuries. There is a peculiar soil in which these doctrines take root. Wherever the chief economic problem is the unjust distribution of land, Christian communism seems to appeal to the masses.

Robert Hunter
When principles will not work out in practice and the obstructions confronting men are too great, even the most faithful give way. And this, so far as we know, is what happened to every Tolstoyan.

Robert Hunter
The poor did not hear such doctrines gladly and they were not at all disposed to follow the teaching of Tolstoy.... such teaching was no more acceptable to the peasants than some of Tolstoy's other views were to his wife and to the Government.... The more enlightened of their leaders looked upon him as a reactionary, standing in the way of the people's progress.

Robert Hunter
The world cannot utterly ignore men who lay down their lives for any cause. Men may write and agitate, they may scream never so shrilly about the wrongs of the world, but when they go forth to fight single-handed and to die for what they preach, they have at least earned the right to demand of society an inquiry.

Robert Hunter
Few fathers or mothers could be induced even to listen to Tolstoy without irritation, and therefore most of his admirers, followers, and hero worshipers were young men and women, some of whom were of a type that must have been a disappointment to him.

Robert Hunter
He [Tolstoy] denounced science and all the products of the mechanical era, including "steam-engines, and telegraphs, photographs, telephones, sewing-machines, phonographs, electricity, telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes, chloroform, Lister bandages, carbolic acid... All this progress is very striking indeed;" he writes, "but owing to some unlucky chance... this progress has not as yet ameliorated, but it has rather deteriorated the condition of the working man... [It is] these very... machines which have deprived him of his wages, and brought him to a state of entire slavery to the manufacturer." He denounced the motives of those who engineer this progress.

Robert Hunter
Tolstoy's suggestions created no enthusiasm among the people. All.. seemed to be more than eager for Russia to hasten along the path already traversed by western civilization

Robert Hunter
If one's point of view is that of the anarchist, he is led inevitably to make his war upon individuals. The more sensitive and sincere he is, the more bitter and implacable becomes that war. If one's point of view is based on what is now called the economic interpretation of history, one is emancipated, in so far as that is possible for emotional beings, from all hatred of individuals, and one sees before him only the necessity of readjusting the economic basis of our common life in order to achieve a more nearly perfect social order.

Robert Hunter
To live miserable we know not why, to have the dread of hunger, to work sore and yet gain nothing—this is the essence of poverty.

Robert Hunter