I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
Whittaker ChambersRead
Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Innocence offers calmness and confidence, while guilt provokes defensiveness.
Whittaker Chambers reflects on the contrasting behaviors of innocent and guilty individuals. He posits that those who are innocent project a sense of peace and openness, inviting scrutiny and having nothing to hide, whereas guilt breeds defensiveness and agitation, causing people to react strongly when questioned about their actions.
Themes
InnocenceGuiltCalmnessDefensivenessTruth
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a discussion about integrity and honesty.
More from Whittaker Chambers
All quotes →Men who sincerely abhorred the word Communism in the pursuit of common ends found that they were unable to distinguish Communists from themselves…. For men who could not see that what they firmly believed was liberalism added up to socialism could scarcely be expected to see what added up to Communism. Any charge of Communism enraged them precisely because they could not grasp the differences between themselves and those against whom it was made.
Whittaker ChambersRead
On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.
Whittaker ChambersRead
At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another.
Whittaker ChambersRead
Life is not worth living for which a man is not prepared to die at any moment.
Whittaker ChambersRead
The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.
Whittaker ChambersRead
Similar quotes
Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
Hermann HesseRead
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
Terence MckennaRead
Very well, then, where do we arrive? Where do we arrive with our respect, our homage, our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time. We can't build a monument to a germ, but we can build one to Adam, who is in the way to turn myth in in fifty years and be entirely forgotten in two hundred. We can build a monument and save his name to the world forever, and we'll do it!
Mark TwainRead
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
Joseph AddisonRead
Power is a disease one has no desire to be cured of.
Giulio AndreottiRead
It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced....Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken pubic support....When the doubt or fear expressed concerns not the success of a particular enterprise but of the whole social plan, it must be treated even more as sabotage.
Friedrich August Von HayekRead