A Quote by Whittaker Chambers

The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.

Whittaker Chambers

Quote Topics

Automatically End Fibers General Happiness Intelligence Itself Pleasure Pursuit Pursuit Of Happiness Replaced Rub Spirit Tends Widely Will

Quote Author

Whittaker Chambers
American - Writer
April 1, 1901 - July 9, 1961

our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.

Madeleine L'Engle

If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness cannot come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.

Theodore Roosevelt

When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.

David McCullough

As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

Richard Hofstadter

All moments of joy include an element of happiness. But not all moments of happiness include joy. Happiness often comes from drive reduction-avoidance of pain or the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake. The essence of joy, on the other hand, is spirit.

Laurel Mellin

When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.

Martin Scorsese

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.

Marcel Proust

You know what made us the biggest, meanest, Big Mac eating, calorie-counting, world-dominating kick-ass powerhouse country in the history of the human race? The pursuit of happiness. Not happiness. The pursuit.

Will Ferguson

For me, the only sources of moral values are the pursuit of understanding and the pursuit of happiness.

Matthew Stewart

With all respect to Mr. Jefferson, I would put the pursuit of wisdom ahead of the pursuit of happiness.

Edmund Fuller

Thomas Jefferson was a real poet. He was slick with that 'pursuit' of happiness because the 'pursuit' puts it back on you.

Will Smith

We are 100 percent responsible for the pursuit of holiness, but at the same time we are 100 percent dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us in that pursuit. The pursuit of holiness is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the Christian life.

Jerry Bridges

I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reality because illusion never leaves us ultimately happy.

Parker Palmer

My aim in life isn't so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit.

Charles Saatchi

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.