Kirby Page Quotes

The political horizon would be greatly clarified if the voters were offered the choice of three parties representing three strategies: A conservative party committed to the preservation of individualism, perhaps in a highly modified form; a communist party bent upon revolutionary changes through violent seizure of power, confiscation, and a proletarian dictatorship; and a radical party seeking to socialize the basic industries and to move toward an equalization of economic privilege through purchase, taxation, and drastic regulation, without resorting to confiscation or armed seizure of power.

There is no inherent irreconcilability between love and coercion, but rather the reverse; under some circumstances love ceases to be love if it fails to use moral means of restraint.

The religion of Jesus can best be described in terms of the home: God Is Father, men are brothers, all life is a domestic affair.

The Christian in Belgium or in England in 1914 should not have gone to war, in my opinion, since war is violently unchristian. He should have been Christian, that is, he should have lived in the spirit of Jesus Christ, returning good for evil, love for hatred, mercy for cruelty, kindness for atrocity. Even if his country had been conquered by Germany, he would have confronted the same situation which Jesus faced, and like Jesus he should have sought to get rid of the oppressor by other means than the sword.

A powerful consumers cooperative movement helps to maintain an equitable balance between prices and profits, and thereby decreases the power of owners and investors.

If men of our age will saturate themselves daily in the mind of Christ, will vividly recall the nobility of his manner of life, and will spend time in conscious communion with the God he so luminously reveals, life will take on richer meanings, and the task of building the new society will become more joyous and challenging.

While it must be admitted that the class of rich absentee owners or investors would doubtless be far less interested in industry if the profit motive were eliminated or subordinated, they represent the group that makes the smallest actual contribution to efficiency in industry.

There may be occasions when "to do unto others as you would have them do unto you" requires coercion.

Jesus teaches the kinship and equality of all children of God. No division of race or color, class or caste, rich or poor, male or female, is found in the teaching of Jesus.

During the lifetime of Jesus the question of freedom was the outstanding problem before the Jewish people. Political independence, economic relief, religious integrity, all awaited the Deliverer...

Followers of Jesus in our day will, by their compassionate concern for the victims of greed and blindness, be stimulated to search more diligently for means of increased persuasiveness of wrongdoers, on the one hand, and for ethical means of restraint, on the other. They will be prepared also to rely exclusively upon means which are consistent with the worthy ends sought, and to take consequences of following Jesus' way of life.

The wastage from economic conflict is so titanic under individualism that even if gross productivity should be reduced somewhat under socialization of the basic industries, the mass of people would nevertheless be better off because of the diminished conflict and resultant devastation.

The premise is debatable that the perpetration of atrocities is sometimes a patriot's duty; that the poisoning of the public mind with distortion and falsehood designed to inflame passions is sometimes a patriot's duty; that the banishment of a loving Father of all men and the bowing down before a god of war is sometimes a patriot's duty. But if these be obligations resting upon patriots, let them be claimed as such in plain unvarnished language.

One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income. This inequality is so extreme that it now constitutes one of the chief sources of bitterness and strife in modern life. ...not that the poor have been getting poorer but that the number and sizes of great fortunes have increased enormously.

At every stage Jesus was confronted with the necessity of choosing. More and more clearly he saw the vast gulf between his ideal and the practices of those about him. In moments of exaltation he caught a vision of life as it ought to be and might be. ...From each succeeding experience of communion with God the conviction became more intense that love alone can bring reconciliation between man and man, and between man and God.