Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“We cannot contemplate without terror the extent of the evil which man can do and endure. How could we believe it possible to find a compensation for this evil, since because of it God suffered crucifixion?”

“Speech of Ivan in the Karamazovs: 'Even though this immense factory were to produce the most extraordinary marvels and were to cost only a single tear from a single child, refuse.' I am in complete agreement with this sentiment. No reason whatever which anyone could produce to compensate for a child's tear would make me consent to that tear.”

“Patience consists in not transforming suffering into crime. That in itself is enough to transform crime into suffering.”

“When there is a transference of evil, the evil is not diminished but increased in him from whom it proceeds. This is a phenomenon of multiplication. The same is true when the evil is transferred to things. Where, then, are we to put the evil? We have to transfer it from the impure part to the pure part of ourselves, thus changing it into pure suffering.”

“Hardened criminals are the only people to whom the penal apparatus can do no harm. It does terrible harm to the innocent.”

“redemptive suffering has to have social origin. It has to be injustice, violence on the part of human beings. The false God changes suffering into violence. The true God changes violence into suffering.”

“I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions which take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

“Social progress does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes only through persistent work and the tireless efforts of dedicated individuals.”

“This method does not seek to defeat and humiliate the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. Occasionally, the nonviolent resister will engage in boycotts and non cooperation. But non cooperation and boycotts are not ends within themselves; they are merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and to awaken his dozing conscience. The end is redemption; the end is reconciliation.”

“That's it. There is a power in love that our world has not dis-covered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi of India discovered it a few years ago, but most men and most women never discover it. For they believe in hitting for hitting; they believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; they believe in hating for hating; but Jesus comes to us and says, "This isn't the way." ”

“Now there is a final reason…Jesus says, "Love your enemies" … love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That's why Jesus says, "Love your enemies." Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption”

“Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and mo-rality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

“Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”

“Democracy is the greatest form of government… that man has ever conceived, but the weakness is that we have never touched it. Isn't it true that we have often taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes? Isn't it true that we have often in our democracy trampled over individuals and races with the iron feet of oppression? Isn't it true that… we have perpetuated colonialism and imperialism?”

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality."

“The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire.”

“How is the struggle against the forces of injustice to be waged? There are two possible answers. One is resort to the all too prevalent method of physical violence and corroding hatred. The danger of this method is ne danger its futility. Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Through the vistas of time a voice still cries to every potential Peter, "Put up your sword!"”

“But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about improved means to an unimproved end. How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live.”

“in the midst of all of that, a voice rings out through all of the generations saying, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest."…You’re caught in this round of life, in this chain of life. All of those who are… heavy laden with …despair,…fear,… anxieties, and disappointment… That’s the voice that comes crying out to modern life,… if we didn’t hear that voice, we couldn’t make it.”

“Then, there is the tension that comes as a results of man’s general finite situation. Man has to face the fact that he’s finite, that he is inevitably limited, that he’s caught up within the categories of time and space. And he faces this thing that he may not be.…He finds himself asking with Shakespeare, "To be or not to be, that’s the question," but he faces the fact that he may not be.”

“And then, there is a tension that results from the fears accompanying a war-torn world. We find ourselves today standing amid the threat of war at every hand, and we often wonder what will happen. We feel at times that the future is uncertain, and we look out and feel that the future is shrouded with impenetrable obscurities, that we don’t know how things will turn out.”

“there is a danger that men will feel that they are mere cogs in a vast industrial machine because it is an industrial world, and man so often becomes depersonalized; the machine becomes the end. This sense of not belonging, this sense of loneliness, characterizes modern life.”

“tension grows out of the whole of modern urbanization and the industrial structure of our modern life. We live in an age in which men live in big cities and mass populations.… And there is a danger that men will feel in such a system that they are lost in the crowd. So men get in the big cities and feel a sense of lostness, feel that they are lost amid all of the vast numbers that they encounter every day.”

“there is a tension that comes as a results of the competitive struggle to make a living. It is true to say that our whole capitalistic economy is based on the profit motive under more or less competitive conditions. And whether we want to or not, we all find ourselves engaged in the competitive struggle to make a living.”

“A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. That is why we are inclined to commit such acts as a way of deliverance.”

“All the criminal violence of the Roman Empire ran up against Christ and in him it became pure suffering. Evil beings, on the other hand, transform simple suffering (sickness for example) into sin. It follows, perhaps, that redemptive suffering has to have a social origin. It has to be injustice, violence on the part of human beings.”

“The sin which we have in us emerges from us and spreads out- side ourselves setting up a contagion of sin. Thus, when we are in a temper, those around us grow angry. Or again, from superior to inferior: anger produces fear. But at the contact of a perfectly pure being there is a transmutation and the sin becomes suffering. Such is the function of the just servant of Isaiah, of the Lamb of God.”

“There is no trace of ‘I’ in the act of preserving. There is in that of destroying. The ‘I’ leaves its mark on the world as it destroys.”

“Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it. Other affections have to be severely disciplined.”

“It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves. It is to seek pleasures in friendship and pleasures which are not deserved. It is something which corrupts even more than love. You would sell your soul for friendship.”