The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster DullesRead
Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Moral power is rooted in a community's relationship with a higher moral authority, rather than in government actions.
In this quote, John Foster Dulles emphasizes that while economic and military power can be nurtured through laws and governmental actions, true moral power is derived from the spiritual and ethical connections that a society has with its own understanding of God. He suggests that churches play a crucial role in fostering the moral strength necessary to ensure human rights and achieve lasting peace, indicating that moral authority transcends legislative frameworks.
Themes
Moral PowerHuman RightsChurchPeaceSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the role of religion in promoting human rights.
More from John Foster Dulles
All quotes →Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.
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The mark of a successful organization isn't whether or not it has problems, its whether it has the same problems it had last year.
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The U.S. has no friends, only interests.
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The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
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I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited, and rightly forfeited, the support of the unsatisfied, of those who are the victims of inevitable imperfections, of those who, young in years or spirit, believe that they can make a better world and of those who dream dreams and want to make their dreams to come true.
John Foster DullesRead
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