Quote #81

...the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which, by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct, and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science and the immoral conclusions deduced from them, commonly called 'civilization.'

More from Leo Tolstoy

  1. ...people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thoug…
  2. ...in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and ...this spiritual element strives to unite…
  3. ...that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere t…
  4. The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere w…
  5. I know that most men - not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult sci…
  6. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life ...but that in public life all forms of violence, such as impr…
  7. And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory... [by which] o…
  8. ...people continued ...to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil …

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