A Quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel
In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.
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...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
Just as the liar 's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed , but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent.
We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society - not a society in which the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State.
But my belief is growing that our political and social evils are remediable, if only all of us who want a change for the better just get up and work for it, all the time, with as much knowledge and intelligence as we can muster for it. Half the wrongs of human life exist because of the inertia of people who simply will not use their energies in fighting for what they believe in. And finally the wrongs roll up into world catastrophes and millions of deaths and a terrible set-back for all mankind.
You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about.
If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.
Tensions exist in any free society. But the freedom we enjoy rests on a foundation of individual liberty and shared moral values.
A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.
Only responsible human beings can exist in an anarchistic society.
Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and madness.
We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.
If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.
And just like men are responsible of the society, women also are equally responsible of the society they live in.
As I've been saying for decades, as long as racism exists in society, it will exist in all facets of society. Until we eradicate it from society, football will be like any other industry.
We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?
Terrorism thrives on a free society. The terrorist uses the feelings in a free society to sap the will of civilization to resist. If the terrorist succeeds, he has won and the whole of free society has lost.
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