Christopher Dawson quotes

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy. (Christopher Dawson)
As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Law describes the way things would work if men were angels. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Man is a means and not an end, and he is a means to economic or political ends which are not really ends in themselves but means to other ends which in their turn are means and so ad infinitum. View quote
Christopher Dawson
It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends. View quote
Christopher Dawson
And so, today, if the state can no longer appeal to the old moral principles that belong to the Christian tradition, it will be forced to create a new official faith and new moral principles which will be binding on its citizens. View quote
Christopher Dawson
For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Every society rests in the last resort on the recognition of common principles and common ideals, and if it makes no moral or spiritual appeal to the loyalty of its members, it must inevitably fall to pieces. (Christopher Dawson)
It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions. View quote
Christopher Dawson
American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World. View quote
Christopher Dawson
If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Man can know his world without falling back on revelation; he can live his life without feeling his utter dependence on supernatural powers. View quote
Christopher Dawson
This freedom of political discussion on the highest level is something which Western civilization has in common with that of classical antiquity, but with no other. View quote
Christopher Dawson
But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political; it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms. View quote
Christopher Dawson
The Church as a divine society possess an internal principle of life which is capable of assimilating the most diverse materials and imprinting her own image upon them. (Christopher Dawson)
Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in theorder of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Unlike other peoples the United States found their origin in a deliberate act of corporate self-assertion, and ever since the Revolution every little American has been taught to associate himself personally with this creative act. View quote
Christopher Dawson
No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion. View quote
Christopher Dawson
Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology. View quote
Christopher Dawson