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Christopher Dawson Biography

Christopher Henry Dawson FBA (12 October 1889, Hay Castle – 25 May 1970, Budleigh Salterton) was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century". The 1988–1989 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.

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Christopher Dawson Quotes

The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values.

Age, Literature, Present, Slump, Slumps

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

Decide, Fight, Fighting, Indistinguishable, Mean, Philosophical

It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole

Culture, East, Particular, Race, True, Universal

The chief safeguard of personal freedom in a democratic society is the anarchy and disorder of capitalist individualism.

Anarchy, Disorder, Freedom, Individualism, Personal

No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. It is impossible to explain this fact in purely economic terms by a materialistic interpretation of history. The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity, which has gradually made Western man conscious of his moral responsibility and his duty to change the world.

Europe, Men, Moral, Principle, Responsibility, Spiritual

No society lies nearer to the cyclonic path of the forces of world change than the United States, and few societies are more intellectually aware of the nature of the issues that have to be faced

Forces, Issues, Lying, Societies, United States, World

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

Angel, Angels, Law, Men, Things, Work

It is the religious impulse which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture. . . A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.

Cohesive, Culture, Lost, Religious, Society

Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples.

Age, Civilization, Cooperation, Different, History

As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

Christian, Culture, Lying, Pointed, Religion, Western Culture

Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in theorder of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being.

Culture, Grace, Nature, Order

We have entered a new phase of culture - we may call it the Age of the Cinema - in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification. It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation.

Live In The Moment, Perfection, Phase, Purely, Religious, Scientific

You can give men food and leisure and amusements and good conditions of work, and still they will remain unsatisfied. You can deny them all these things, and they will not complain so long as they feel that they have something to die for

Giving, Long, Men, Things, Unsatisfied, Work

Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature.

Depth, Down, Looks, Natural, Reality

It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends.

Church, Culture, Cultures, Literature, Subject

If man attempts to suppress the animal side of his nature by a sheer effort of conscious will, nature finds a hundred unexpected and unpleasant ways to take its revenge.

Animal, Conscious, Men, Revenge, Sheer, Take

Man is a means and not an end, and he is a means to economic or political ends which are not really ends in themselves but means to other ends which in their turn are means and so ad infinitum

Ends, Man, Mean, Men, Political

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

Hero, Hollywood, Long, Myths, West

It is Christian culture that has created Western man and the Western way of life.

Christian, Created, Life, Men, Religious, Way

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion

Aggressive, Doubt, Passion, Past, Revolutions, War

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