Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Right wins only when we dare and act.
Hallucinations and illusions are not facts useful for scientific investigation.
Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real.
The love of individual freedom has stood in the way of the appreciation of social obligations.
Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?
We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld.
Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life.
The language of theism which was familiar to the people, gave Gandhi the advantage of easy communication with the people, but it is atheistic in principle. It could have been the starting point for the atheistic movement in the modern age.
Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.
Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality.
Existentialist philosophy recognizes the existence of the individual as the real purpose of human life. The recognition is basically atheistic and it encourages the individual to free himself from the impositions of custom, governmental authority, economic pressures, and cultural inhibitions.
Further, economic systems ... have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions.
Satyagraha means insistence on what one knows to be the truth. The insistence implies the exercise of free will as the need of social obligation. If one is content to know the truth himself, he does not become a votary of Satyagraha. A Satyagrahi should not only know the truth but should insist upon it in social relations. So Satyagraha is activation of truthfulness.
The insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom.