Quote #84

It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life ...but that in public life all forms of violence, such as imprisonment, executions, and wars -might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.

More from Leo Tolstoy

  1. The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere w…
  2. ...people continued ...to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil …
  3. ...in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and ...this spiritual element strives to unite…
  4. In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right fo…
  5. ...the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which, by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for t…
  6. unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but ...larg…
  7. ...people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thoug…
  8. ...obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained rule…

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