A Quote by Jacques Ellul

It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war. We ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual decrease in human participation in technical operations.
We don't consider manual work as a curse, or a bitter necessity, not even as a means of making a living. We consider it as a high human function, as the basis of human life, the most dignified thing in the life of the human being, and which ought to be free, creative. Men ought to be proud of it.
No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all intercourse of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge: this may be bad; but it is human nature.
Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.
Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.
If a person trains his mind to walk in the spirit, and brings his whole mind to bear upon its operations, and upon the principles of faith which are calculated to put him in possession of the power of God, how much greater will be his faculties for obtaining knowledge. . . .
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.
I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.
Any 'transmitting' device or applied technical method, which gets in the way of the 'transmission'/message/story, etc., is a negative element, garbling that which ought to be clear and instantly understood, and ought to be simply-stated with economy!
Men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite , which dislocate all mathematical operations.
The real aim of social and industrial organization ought to be the production of strong, healthy men and women, capable of playing and working with the least pain and the greatest joy.
War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.
Nothing ought more to humiliate men who have merited great praise than the care they still take to boast of little things.
The medical operations are so challenging because they're so technical, as well. I assumed before we started that we would do the classic thing, when it comes to the operations, that we would do all of these inserts with real doctors.
Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor. Wise men are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant. Strong men are to bear with the feeble. Cultured people are to bear with the rude and vulgar. If a rough and coarse man meets an ecstatically fine man, the man that is highest up is to be the servant of the man that is lowest down.
Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.
It behooves us always to bear in mind, that while actions are always to be judged by the immutable standard of right and wrong, the judgments which we pass upon men must be qualified by considerations of age, country, station, and other accidental circumstances; and it will then be found that he who is most charitable in his judgment is generally the least unjust.
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