Harold J. Laski: “It may be generous, charitable, kind; but the surrounding principle of…”

On the record

It may be generous, charitable, kind; but the surrounding principle of those qualities is always their exercise as of grace and not in justice.

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Harold J. Laski

Source

Laski critiques the nature of charitable acts within an aristocracy, suggesting they stem from grace rather than justice.

More from Harold J. Laski

When I obey the state, I obey the best part of myself.

The State has power only for the protection of natural law.

He realized that freedom is born of a certain spontaneity for which the rigid lines of doctrinaire thinkers left no room.

Yet such defects must not blind us to the general rightness of their insight.

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Harold J. Laski: “It may be generous, charitable, kind; but the surrounding principle of those qualities is always their exercise as of…”