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
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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the moral and emotional burden of informing on others, highlighting the internal conflict it creates.
Whittaker Chambers expresses the profound sadness and moral conflict associated with being an informer, suggesting that the act of betraying others leads to a loss of one's own integrity and spirit. He portrays informing as a necessary yet painful duty, one that strips a person of joy and leaves a lasting emotional scar.
In practice
During a discussion on ethics, one might quote this to illustrate the emotional cost of betrayal.
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.
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.
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.
Life is not worth living for which a man is not prepared to die at any moment.
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.
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.
Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans. Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others. Ours is a country based upon tolerance and we welcome people of all faiths in America.
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation.
I think the O.J. Simpson trial was a revelation about the ongoing patterns of racial difference in American society.
However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
God has wisely kept us in the dark concerning future events and reserved for himself the knowledge of them, that he may train us up in a dependence upon himself and a continued readiness for every event.
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