Everybody loves to talk about calmness and peace, whether in a family, national, or international context, but without inner peace how can we make real peace? World peace through hatred and force is impossible.
There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom.
I believe I understand anti-Semitism which is a very complex movement. I see it as a Jew, but without hatred or fear. I recognize what is anti-Semitism is rude jesting, vulgar jealousy of métier, hereditary prejudice; but also what can be considered as in fact legitimate defence.
It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.
The method of trying to conquer hatred through hatred never succeeds in overcoming hatred. But, the method of overcoming hatred through non-hatred is eternally effective. That is why that method is described as eternal wisdom.
The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions - hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity - also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.