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Successful Socialism Depends On The Perfectibility Of Man. Unless All, Or Nearly All, Men Are High-minded And Clear-sighted, It Isbound To Be A Rotten Failure In Any But A Physical Sense. Even Through It Is Altruism, Socialism Means Materialism. You Can Guarantee The Things Of The Body To Every One, But You Cannot Guarantee The Things Of The Spirit To Every One; You Can Guarantee Only That The Opportunity To Seek Them Shall Not Be Denied To Any One Who Chooses To Seek Them.

-Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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Successful Socialism Depends On

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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Successful Socialism Depends On The Perfectibility Of Man. Unless All, Or Nearly All, Men Are High-minded And Clear-sighted, It Isbound To Be A Rotten Failure In Any But A Physical Sense. Even Through It Is Altruism, Socialism Means Materialism. You Can Guarantee The Things Of The Body To Every One, But You Cannot Guarantee The Things Of The Spirit To Every One; You Can Guarantee Only That The Opportunity To Seek Them Shall Not Be Denied To Any One Who Chooses To Seek Them.

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Each Man's Private Conscience Ought To Be A Nice Little Self-registering Thermometer: He Ought To Carry His Moral Code Incorruptibly And Explicitly Within Himself, And Not Care What The World Thinks. The Mass Of Human Beings, However, Are Not Made That Way; And Many People Have Been Saved From Crime Or Sin By The Simple Dislike Of Doing Things They Would Not Like To Confess.

If You Are Perfectly Willing To Shock An Individual Verbally, The Next Thing You Will Be Doing Is To Shock Him Practically.

Some Of The Men And Women Who Will Not Say In So Many Words The Thing Which Is Not, Will Deliberately Give A False Impression. They Are Not The Servants Of Truth; They Are The Parasites Of Truth.

On The Whole, I Should Say That The Person Who Likes To Lie Should Never, In Any Circumstances, Be Allowed To. Leave The Lying To The People Who Hate It. You Will Not Find Them Indulging Often.

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There Is No Morality By Instinct. There Is No Social Salvation In The End Without Taking Thought; Without Mastery Of Logic And Application Of Logic To Human Experience.

Nothing Makes People So Worthy Of Compliments As Receiving Them. One Is More Delightful For Being Told One Is Delightful-just As One Is More Angry For Being Told One Is Angry.

Society, By Insisting On Conventions, Has Merely Insisted On Certain Convenient Signs By Which We May Know That A Man Is Considering, In Daily Life, The Comfort Of Other People.

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Men Demand Everything And Are Not Satisfied Until Sex Blinds Them Into Thinking They Have Got It.

Simplicity Is An Acquired Taste. Mankind, Left Free, Instinctively Complicates Life.

Inspirational Life

The Principle Of Fashion Is . . . The Principle Of The Kaleidoscope. A New Year Can Only Bring Us A New Combination Of The Same Elements; And About Once In So Often We Go Back And Begin Again.

Educational Legislation Nowadays Is Largely In The Hands Of Illiterate People, And The Illiterate Will Take Good Care That Their Illiteracy Is Not Made A Reproach On Them.

Culture' Means A Long Receptivity To Things Of The Mind And The Spirit.

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The Insidiousness Of Science Lies In Its Claim To Be Not A Subject, But A Method.

Civilization Is Merely An Advance In Taste: Accepting, All The Time, Nicer Things, And Rejecting Nasty Ones.

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Many Of Us Do Not Believe In Capital Punishment, Because Thus Society Takes From A Man What Society Cannot Give.

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