Christopher Dawson quotes

Christopher Dawson is a renowned historian, writer, and theologian. With an impressive body of work spanning several decades, Dawson's expertise lies in exploring the interplay between religion, culture, and civilization. His influential books, including "Religion and the Rise of Western Culture," have made him a leading authority in his field. Drawing on a deep understanding of history and anthropology, Dawson's research has shed light on the role of religion in shaping societies throughout time. His insightful analysis and thought-provoking ideas continue to captivate scholars and readers worldwide. Discover the profound impact of Christopher Dawson's contributions to our understanding of the intricate relationship between religion and cultural development through his extensive repertoire of books and articles.

The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values.

- Christopher Dawson

The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political; it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms.

- Christopher Dawson

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

- Christopher Dawson

It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions.

- Christopher Dawson

Man is a means and not an end, and he is a means to economic or political ends which are not really ends in themselves but means to other ends which in their turn are means and so ad infinitum.

- Christopher Dawson

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

- Christopher Dawson

Every society rests in the last resort on the recognition of common principles and common ideals, and if it makes no moral or spiritual appeal to the loyalty of its members, it must inevitably fall to pieces.

- Christopher Dawson

The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language.

- Christopher Dawson

For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity.

- Christopher Dawson

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

- Christopher Dawson

It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole.

- Christopher Dawson

Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.

- Christopher Dawson

Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one.

- Christopher Dawson

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.

- Christopher Dawson

American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.

- Christopher Dawson

No society lies nearer to the cyclonic path of the forces of world change than the United States, and few societies are more intellectually aware of the nature of the issues that have to be faced.

- Christopher Dawson

If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear.

- Christopher Dawson

Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in theorder of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being.

- Christopher Dawson

And so, today, if the state can no longer appeal to the old moral principles that belong to the Christian tradition, it will be forced to create a new official faith and new moral principles which will be binding on its citizens.

- Christopher Dawson

The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution.

- Christopher Dawson

It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends.

- Christopher Dawson

As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

- Christopher Dawson

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

- Christopher Dawson

This freedom of political discussion on the highest level is something which Western civilization has in common with that of classical antiquity, but with no other.

- Christopher Dawson

Man can know his world without falling back on revelation; he can live his life without feeling his utter dependence on supernatural powers.

- Christopher Dawson

Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples.

- Christopher Dawson

Unlike other peoples the United States found their origin in a deliberate act of corporate self-assertion, and ever since the Revolution every little American has been taught to associate himself personally with this creative act.

- Christopher Dawson