Kirby Page Quotes

The God of Jesus differs fundamentally from the Jehovah presented in many sections of the Old Testament, where is frequently pictured as authorizing pillage and slaughter and... as... an active participant in war...

This race of armaments made Europe an armed camp and laid the foundations for the most colossal slaughter in human history.

The religion of Jesus begins and ends in the home. All life is a domestic affair. The universal family embraces every race and tongue. Man's primary purpose is to establish the Family of God... The way to create God's home is to live every day as a good member of the family. Only those ends are worthy which are consonant with the family spirit and only those methods are justifiable which are appropriate in the home.

It is possible to deal with criminal rulers or officials by strengthening the liberal forces within that country.

Taxation must be used as an instrument of social policy, but if carried too far under the profit system, it may be an instrument of destruction rather than construction.

We find the verses, "I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34), and "Let him sell his cloak and buy a sword" (Luke 22:36), which are used as proof that Jesus wanted his disciples to be prepared for war. ...in Matthew, we find that the very next verse reads: "For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ...If one means that Jesus came to bring a literal sword then the next means that he came as a great home-wrecker, setting the members thereof one against the other. Such a literal interpretation prevents any clear understanding of the words of Jesus. Surely his words, "I came not to send peace but a sword," mean that he came to bring about a sharp division between those who do right and those who do wrong. In Kent's translation of the New Testament, these words read: "I did not come to bring peace, but a struggle. For I came to make a man disagree with his father, a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. It is to be doubted if a single reputable Biblical scholar can be found who will interpret these words to mean that Jesus had reference to a literal sword as a means of accomplishing a desired end. With reference to the passage in Luke, one has only to read the verses that follow to see that Jesus could not have meant these words as a sanction of war. It was the last evening of Jesus life... He himself was about to be reckoned with transgressors and surely his disciples would have to encounter bitter opposition. They must therefore be prepared must be armed must have swords. ...the disciples, promptly misunderstanding Jesus' reference to a sword, reminded him that they had two, and he replied, "It is enough" or according to Moffatt's translation, "Enough! Enough!"). But obviously, two swords were not enough to defend his life from his strong and determined foes; two swords were not enough for war. They were, however, enough and even one was enough, to convey his thought of being prepared for the time of stress that was approaching. Professor Hastings Rashdall, the eminent theologian and philosopher, says in this connection: "More probably the words were 'a piece of ironical foreboding,' which the disciples took literally. The 'it is enough' will then mean, 'Drop that idea: my words were not meant seriously."

The war method includes falsehood as an integral part. Truth is indeed a casualty of war.

If individuals exercise the freedom to seek their own gain through competitive struggle and to acquire unlimited wealth and property, the result for most of the population will be bondage to destitution and insecurity.

The earliest authority was the word of the strongest warrior, the head of the family or the tribe, the medicine man or the witch doctor.

The physical basis for international cooperation is being more firmly established each decade. Space is being bridged and time eliminated by modern inventions.

Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.

All of our boasted wealth, wonderful inventions and incalculable mechanical power will prove to be an unstable foundation if we continue to dwell together in strife—individual against individual, class against class, nation against nation.

In three ways unemployment would be reduced. First... by greater equalization of purchasing power and consequent stimulus in the form of effective demand. Second, by utilizing the national credit and socialized industries for the creation of new industries and the extension of existing ones. ...Social ownership and operation of the basic industries, and especially socialized banking and credit, would greatly facilitate the task of shifting the masses of unemployed into productive channels. Third, if necessary, by shortening working hours and dividing the available work among all the people.

The competitive struggle forces men and women to spend an excessive amount of time in the kitchen of life and thereby denies them maximum opportunity of appropriating the values of library, conservatory, chapel and living room.

If rugged individualists would throw away the right to fight for special privilege and would cooperate in a collective endeavor to secure plenty for everybody, they would have time, energy, and desire to explore higher pathways of living.