Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Leo Tolstoy

Quote by Leo Tolstoy

“Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.”

Quote by Leo Tolstoy

Book:The kingdom of God: and peace essays
Create image

Work

The kingdom of God: and peace essays

This book is a compilation of essays that delve into the philosophical, theological, and social aspects of the kingdom of God. The essays examine various interpretations of the concept and its relevance to achieving peace in society. more

Author

Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer and thinker, a prominent representative of 19th-century Russian literature. His works deeply revealed social contradictions and human nature, and had a profound impact on the world. more

You May Also Like

“[D]iscipline consists in this, that the men who undergo the instruction and have followed it for a certain time are completely deprived of everything which is precious to a man-of the chief human property, rational freedom-and become submissive, machine-like implements of murder in the hands of their organized hierarchic authorities.”

MenHumansWarHandsCertainHe ManAuthorityMachinesMurderPropertyRationalChiefsOrganizedInstructionAnti WarDeprivedSubmissive
Book:The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy
Create image

“It is because peaceful agitation and passive resistance are effective that I uphold them, and it is because force strengthens tyranny that I condemn it. War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions. It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity.”

WarForceLibertyConditionsAuthorityExtremesFoolishTyrannyResistancePeacefulCompanionAnti WarPassiveResortsAgitationPassive Resistance
Author:Benjamin Tucker
Create image

“The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . . . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.”

PeopleWayHas BeensWarStatesFightingEnemyStudyMilitaryErrorsSoldierFallenInternalsResolveAnti WarEpisodesCompulsion
Author:Simone Weil
Create image

“We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself.”

KnowsFirstsEarthDealsKnow HowMajorsFirst TimeTraditionSuicideEnvironmentalKillingEthicalGenocideCollapseClosingBiodiversityDevastationHomicideDestituteIrreversibleClosing Down
Book:The Great Work: Our Way into the Future
Create image

“A diverse ecosystem will also be resilient, because it contains many species with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another. When a particular species is destroyed by a severe disturbance so that a link in the network is broken, a diverse community will be able to survive and reorganize itself... In other words, the more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.”

AbleCommunityParticularBrokenFunctionSpeciesComplexesPatternsDestroyedComplexityLinksDiverseEcologySevereEcologicalResilientEcosystemsDisturbanceBiodiversityInterconnectionOverlapping
Author:Fritjof Capra
Create image