Can you look forward to the future of our country and imagine any state of things in which, with slavery still existing, we should be assured of permanent peace? I cannot.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the impossibility of achieving lasting peace while injustice, such as slavery, persists in society.
In this quote, Robert Dale Owen argues that true peace cannot be achieved in a society that allows for profound injustices, such as slavery. He suggests that as long as slavery exists, the foundations of peace are fundamentally compromised, and any imagined future that includes this institution must be viewed skeptically. The quote serves as a call to action for social justice and highlights the moral obligation to eradicate oppression for a harmonious society.
In practice
During a speech about civil rights, one might include this quote to emphasize the need for justice in the fight for equality.
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.
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