There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the “Welfare State.” The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism — an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat. Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, “No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company.” Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies. But there is a catch to this argument, and it is this: although it is true that individuals of small means own shares in the company, it is not true that they run the company. Their responsibility for its policies is nil. Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail. Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen “their” company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property — ownership and responsibility — are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own. The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee “employer” — the thousands of individual owners of stock — whom “management” represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman’s livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits. Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms. One way of remedying the situation would be through a profound alternative of our political and economic life, with the aim of distributing the means of production more widely by giving every workman a share in profits, management, and ownership, all three. The other alternative which is not a constructive solution is confiscation: this may take the violent form of communism, or the less noticeable form of bureaucratic encroachment through taxation, as favored by the welfare state. [and/or outright confiscation likened to General Motors, AIG, and Banks, etc. etc. etc.] Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs. The denial of the right of ownership to a man is a denial of his basic freedom: freedom without property is always incomplete. To be “secured” — but with no accompanying responsibility – is to be the slave of whatever group provides the security. A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the “slave state” disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free. [“New Slavery: Freedom without Property is Incomplete,” originally published in On Being Human: Reflections, On Life and Living , New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982.]
It is true there is difficulty in entering into a devout life, but this difficulty does not arise from the religion which begins in us, but from the irreligion which is still there. If our senses were not opposed to penitence, and if our corruption were not opposed to the purity of God, there would be nothing in this painful to us. We suffer only in proportion as the vice which is natural to us resists supernatural grace; our heart feels torn asunder by these conflicting efforts, but it would be most unjust to impute this violence to God, who draws us, instead of attributing it to the world, which holds us back. As a child which a mother tears from the robbers' arms, in the anguish it suffers should love the loving and legitimate violence of her who procures its liberty, and detest only the imperious and tyrannical violence of those who retain it unjustly. The most cruel war which God can make against men in this life is to leave them without that war which he came to bring. "I came to bring war," he says, and to inform them of this war, "I came to bring fire and the sword." Before him the world lived in a false peace.
Your market has a free choice, and only be supplying what the market wants, and not by your efforts to impose your merchandise, will you get your maximum share of the market’s potential.
Dem Herlichsten, was auch der Geist empfangen, drangt Stoff sich an=--Matter presses heavily on the noblest efforts of the spirit.
I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
Immoritur studiis, et amore senescit habendi=--He is killing himself with his efforts, and in his greed of gain is becoming an old man.
To grow a sanctuary from seedlings takes time. But time has a way of going faster than you realize, and before you're aware of it you'll be rewarded hundredfold for your efforts.
I know this in no way alleviates the enormous amounts of pain and loss experienced by those who have suffered from the tsunami, but I hope it can make a difference.
Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is once more this, "Consider the lilies how they grow." Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.
There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.
He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.
There is no evasion of this moral responsibility of all the nations and especially of the most powerful nations for that peace and justice which, together with the security of one’s own nation, is the object of foreign policy. Too many people who eagerly draw up perfect blueprints for world organization are secretly influenced by the expectation that after the establishment of such legal institutions they will get rid of the continuous responsibility of a burdensome foreign policy. They have fallen into the same fallacy as the classical liberal economists, namely, that if a certain set of legal institutions should be introduced, then out of the individuals’ efforts to pursue their unrestricted self-interest the social harmony would automatically ensue. The result was, of course, not social harmony but the power struggle of collective interests, class struggles, and the like. If in the national order the merely legalistic concept of the state according to the liberal pattern is impossible, a complete juridification of the international order will be even less possible. On World Peace, Justice and Charity . Too many of the planners, moreover, have an optimistic though mechanistic psychology according to which man is the creature of his institutional environment, that is, he is a bundle of causal reactions to the primary acting environmental and objective institutional factors. But this psychology of determinism forgets that man is conditioned and motivated, but not causally determined, by these institutional factors. There remains a residual sphere beyond all causal determinations, where man is morally free and can become truly culpable, not innocently guilty as in the ancient tragedy. [Sophocles’ “Oedipus Trilogy”] Sometimes this over-all juridification is caused by a tacit rejection of man’s moral nature. And contradictions appear, such as this, that Hitler is wholly explained causally as the effect of causes that are sociological, institutional, and so on, and yet considered personally and morally guilty. Politics is an integral part of ethics, as is law. Arbitrary power must be controlled by positive law. But, that law may be enabled to do so, it must itself be backed by power responsible to the moral ideas, to the national common good. The strife among nations can be best settled if the universal law of morality, the principles of natural law as the unwritten constitution of the international community, are commonly accepted. For then power is put in the service of the fundamental moral ideas. And there is no evasion of the principle that the greater the power, influence, and prestige of a nation, the greater is its responsibility for peace and justice. Moreover, the less can this responsibility be shifted to any legal institution, however abstractly perfect, and the nation still hope to return securely to a splendid isolation and to the sole pursuit of its own national happiness. On the other hand, only after the powerful nations are ready to accept in mutual understanding their direct and inseparable responsibility for peace, only then will the legal institution work. But just as important is the perpetual will to establish justice, that is, to work for changes of the actual status quo when it has become an obviously unjust status, the continuation of which would endanger the peace of the world. Peace is the work of justice. Hence it will always be this moral will to justice that gives the legal institutions power. Without this moral will and concordant responsibility, the institutions will be empty hulks, a derision of the idea of law. Though peace, the tranquility of the order, is the work of justice, justice itself ought to be vivified by charity, based on the common brotherhood of men and on the common fatherhood of God. These three — charity vivifying justice, justice working peace, and peace being tranquility of the order — by permeating and inspiring the legal institutions, are the real guaranty for the peace of the world. [“World Peace”, The State in Catholic Thought , IV.xxxii.vii.]
A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.
If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.
Sloth is a sneaky sin that quietly creeps into the lives of people, even religious ones, and gradually chokes out true spirituality. It diverts our attention from the things of heaven to a myriad of other things until we find ourselves bored with God, making only routine and mechanical efforts to “fulfill our Sunday obligation.” There is no passion, no zeal, no desire. Just lots of excuses.
The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his occasional efforts, but by his ordinary life.
I have not been one of those fortunate persons who are able to regard a popular lecture as a mere _hors d'oeuvre_, unworthy of being ranked among the serious efforts of a philosopher; and who keep their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts--at least of the successful sort--to be understanded of the people.
Do we lose anything if we find that what we hold to be the most valuable truth is shared in and supported by millions of human beings? Ancient philosophers were most anxious to support their own belief in God by the unanimous testimony of mankind. They made the greatest efforts to prove that there was no race so degraded and barbarous as to be without a belief in something divine. Some modern theologians seem to grudge to all religions but their own the credit of having a pure and true, nay any concept of God at all, quite forgetful of the fact that a truth does not cease to be a truth because it is accepted universally. I know no heresy more dangerous to true religion than this denial that a true concept of God is within the reach of every human being, is, in fact, the common inheritance of mankind, however fearfully it may have been misused and profaned by Christian and un-Christian nations.
You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of this, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
The resentment of a poor man is like the efforts of a harmless insect to sting; it may get him crushed, but cannot defend him.
This lifestyle of putting on the armor implies consistent and multiple efforts. We live this way because of what can happen if we don’t: relinquishing the benefit of our position in Christ as we are bombarded by schemes designed to destroy us and render us ineffective in kingdom pursuits.
The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. … The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in "the discarding of words", it lies "outside words".
So that if it be true on the one hand that some lax religious, and some corrupt casuists, who are not members of the hierarchy, are steeped in these corruptions, it is on the other hand certain that the true pastors of the Church, who are the true depositories of the divine word, have preserved it unchangeably against the efforts of those who have striven to ruin it.
The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance
The amateur, however weak may be his efforts at imitation, need not be discouraged, ... for one advances to an idea the more surely and steadily the more accurately and precisely he considers individual objects. Only it will not do to measure one's self with artists; every one must go on in his own style.
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, especially the eyes.
God, that he may reserve to himself alone the right to instruct us and that he may render the difficulty of our being unintelligible to us, has hidden the knot so high, or rather so low, that we cannot reach it. So that it is not by the efforts of our reason, but by the simple submission of our reason, that we can truly know ourselves.
Let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under its auspices, the protection of the laws and of the authorities will be sufficient for all the inhabitants of the Republic. May the people and the government respect the rights of all. Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others.
Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
You wish to reform the world: reform yourself, otherwise your efforts will be in vain.--ST. IGNATIUS.
Moses continued writing under the direction of God, but finally he rose up and put away the writing equipment, the ink and the stylus, and the parchment. He put the parchment with others upon which he had let the ink dry, and now he gathered them all together, holding them with trembling hands. These were the records God had given him. Even going back to the story of Adam and Eve and tracing the history of God’s dealing with men. This holy book that Moses had written with his own hand would perish, but he had trained the scribes of Israel to make copies of his work and to take monumental efforts to keep the text exactly as God had given it to Moses himself.
[Employee participation] programs and employee ownership are important efforts to deal with powerlessness at work. 1981 interview. [Quoted in Working Together , p. 265.]
Our economic assistance must be carefully targeted, and must make maximum use of the energy and efforts of the private sector…. Economic freedom is the world’s mightiest engine for abundance and social justice…. Developing countries need to be encouraged to experiment with a growing variety of arrangements for profit sharing and expanded capital ownership. [Speech on foreign policy presented to the American Legion, February 22, 1983.]
No man can be good, or great, or happy, except through inward efforts of his own.
Whoever aims at doing or enjoying all and everything with his entire nature, whoever tries to link together all that is without him by such a species of enjoyment will only lose his time in efforts that can never be successful.
If the popular lecture thus, as I believe, finds one moiety of its justification in the self-discipline of the lecturer, it surely finds the other half in its effect on the auditory. For though various sadly comical experiences of the results of my own efforts have led me to entertain a very moderate estimate of the purely intellectual value of lectures; though I venture to doubt if more than one in ten of an average audience carries away an accurate notion of what the speaker has been driving at; yet is that not equally true of the oratory of the hustings, of the House of Commons, and even of the pulpit?
If we only hold fast the belief that nothing happens but by the will of God, we learn to be still and can bear everything. The older one grows, the more one feels sure that life here is but a long imprisonment, and one longs for freedom and higher efforts.... How small and insignificant is all in this life when we raise our eyes above. Gazing up to the Lord of the Universe, all strife is made easy. We speak different tongues when we think of the Highest, but we all mean the same thing.
Sometimes God leaves us for a long time unable to effect any good, that we may learn to humble ourselves, and never to glory in our efforts.-- ST. VINCENT FERRER.
Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the dominion of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.--_George Eliot._
When incentive to acquire and obtain property is gone, people no longer make efforts to acquire any.…Those who infringe upon property rights commit an injustice.… If this occurs repeatedly, all incentives to cultural enterprise are destroyed and they cease utterly to make an effort. This leads to destruction and ruin of civilization. [ Mukaddimah , 40 volumes written from A.D. 1375-1378, translated by Franz Rosenthal, Vol. 2, pp. 103-109, 1967.]
Magno conatu magnas nugas=--By great efforts to obtain great trifles.
One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness — simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience.
A man's virtue is to be measured not by his extraordinary efforts, but his everyday conduct.
Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom — and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.
Our efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession of failures, and, instead of rising into the beauty of holiness, our life is a daily heart-break and humiliation. Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.
We should never leave our prayer closets in the morning without having concentrated our thoughts deeply and intensely on the fact of the actual presence of God there with us, encompassing us, and filling the room as literally as it fills heaven itself. It may not lead to any distinct results at first, but, as we make repeated efforts to realize the presence of God, it will become increasingly real to us. And, as the habit grows upon us, when alone in a room, or when treading the sward of some natural woodland temple, or when pacing the stony street--in the silence of night, or amid the teeming crowds of daylight--we shall often find ourselves whispering the words, "Thou art near; thou art here, O Lord."--_F. B. Meyer._
The efforts of him who contendeth with one stronger than himself are as feeble as the exertions of an insect's wings.
It is the law of fate that we shall live in part by our own efforts, but in the greater part by the help of others; and that we shall also die in part for our own faults, but in the greater part for the faults of others.
Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.
The end which at present calls forth our efforts will be found when it is once gained to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.--_Johnson._