Christopher Dawson Men Quotations

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

For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity.

If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear.

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

Man can know his world without falling back on revelation; he can live his life without feeling his utter dependence on supernatural powers.

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.

The true makes of history are the spiritual men whom the world knew not, the unregarded agents of the creative action of the Spirit. The supreme instance of this-the key to the Christian understanding of history-is to be found in the Incarnation- the presence of the maker of the world in the world unknown to the world. ... The Incarnation is itself in a sense the divine fruit of history-of the fullness of time-and it finds its extension and completion in the historic life of the Church.

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.

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

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

The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.