The moment that the state ...

The moment that the state came into conflict with the higher power, the moment that it set itself up as an end in itself, it became identified with Augustine's earthly city and lost all claims to a higher sanction than the law of force and self-interest. Without justice, what is a great kingdom but a great robbery, magnum latrocinium?
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 Christopher Dawson

Quotes from the same author

We must recognize that we are living in an imperfect world in which human and superhuman forces of evil are at work and so long as those forces affect the political behaviour of mankind there can be no hope of abiding peace.
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 Christopher Dawson
Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one
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 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.
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 Christopher Dawson
We have entered a new phase of culture - we may call it the Age of the Cinema - in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification. It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation.
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 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.
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 Christopher Dawson