Christopher Dawson

Meta-historian. Scholar. Philosopher. (1889-1970)

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Every world crisis is, as the word denotes, a judgement and a decision out of which something new must come. It is therefore an opportunity to hear the Word of God and for the Holy Spirit to manifest its creative power to humanity.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

If it is possible for a people to organize itself freely it will be stronger than one that is organized by force. It is the old story of the citizen soldiers of ancient Greece against the armies of Persia.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Economic democracy means capitalism for all: it means an extension of the rights of property to every citizen rather than the abolition of private property in the interests of the state.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The age or culture that is thoroughly non-Christian is closed to God and prides itself on its own progress to perfection.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Civilization after civilization in the past has stagnated and fallen into ruin, because it is tainted at the source, in the spiritual will which lies behind the outward show of things.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The Church is socially incomplete unless there is a Christian society as well as an ecclesiastical congregation, and the State is morally incomplete without some spiritual bond other than the law and the power of the sword.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The creators of modern science — Galileo and Newton and Lavoisier and Faraday — were all of them typical representatives of Western culture, and their work is an integral part of the European movement of thought.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

In the Middle Ages...it could really be said that the State was in the Church. The latter was the primary and fundamental social reality, and the State was merely a subordinate institution charged with the office of preserving peace and order.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

It is the great danger of social idealism that it tends to confuse religious and political categories.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The democratic ideal in its economic aspect is neither that of pure individualism nor that of pure state socialism; it is the ideal of a free co-operative economy in which every man has control over his own life and possesses an economic foundation for his social liberty.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Nevertheless this does not mean that the Church is prepared to accept the Capitalist ideal as legitimate or as morally defensible. Catholicism condemns the Capitalist principle of competitive individualism as well as the Socialist principle of class war.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The disease of modern civilization lies neither in science nor in machinery, but in the false philosophy with which they have been associated.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Edmund Burke failed to realize that the Revolution was not merely a negative revolt against Christendom & social order. It was also an assertion of the rights of the peoples against irresponsible government, and of the nations against the outworn traditions of the dynastic state.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The victory that overcomes the world is not success but faith and it is only the eye of faith that understands the true value of history.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The life of the Saints is not...the independent achievement of a few highly gifted individuals, but the perfect manifestation of the supernatural life which exists in every individual Christian, the first fruits of that new humanity which is the work of the Church to create.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Against the congealed mass of American Protestantism and secularism, the thirty million* American Catholics stand out as the one great remaining minority which can never be completely assimilated because it forms part of an international and universal society. (*written in 1957)

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Totalitarianism is the total control of all human activities and all human energies, spiritual as well as physical, by the State.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

The true progress of history is a mystery which is fulfilled in failure and suffering and which will only be revealed at the end of time.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

In all ages, the first creative works of a culture are due to a religious inspiration and dedicated to a religious end...Religion stands at the threshold of all the great literatures of the world. Philosophy is its offspring and is a child which constantly returns to its parent.

[Christopher Dawson @cdawsonquotes]

Liberalism makes self-interest the supreme law in economics, the will of the majority the sovereign power in the State and private opinion the only arbiter in religious matters.