Solidarity

“ And then only would the law of love make its action felt; then would human solidarity, which, among mankind, is the living form of universal attraction, acquire all its power, bringing men closer and closer together, and uniting them in one sole family. A splendid dream it was—the noble and pure dream of absolute freedom—free man in free society. ”

“ May you all be united, may you be agreed, may you serve the solidarity of mankind. May you be well-wishers of all humanity. May you be assistants of every poor one. May you be nurses for the sick. May you be sources of comfort to the broken in heart. May you be a refuge for the wanderer. May you be a source of courage to the affrighted one. Thus, through the favor and assistance of God may the standard of the happiness of humanity be held aloft in the center of the world and the ensign of universal agreement be unfurled. ”

“ Nothing proves more clearly than this fact the natural and inevitable solidarity—this law of sociability—which binds all men together, as each of us can verify daily, both on himself and on all the men whom he knows. ”

“ Do we need, or can we intelligently use, a mystical solidarity? The only solidarity of the race which we seem really to need, or with which we seem able intelligently to deal, is the actual like-mindedness and the actual personal relations themselves—the reciprocal action of spirits—the only kind of reciprocal action which we can finally fully conceive. Any other finite solidarity than this, though it has often figured in theology, seems to me only a name without significance. ”

“ You want a new spirit in society, a new bond between men. You want a new bond between men. Well, so do I, so do we. We realise that if we are going to go ahead we need first and foremost solidarity. Where we fail in our present position is in our lack of solidarity. ”

“ Until this equality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity of humanity, the brotherhood of all men, could never have become the real conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. ”

“ Deliverance will evoke praise, and, instead of the sad succession of sin and suffering from generation to generation, the solidarity of the nation will be more happily expressed by ringing songs, transmitted from father to son, and gathering volume as they flow from age to age. ”

“ He who has once understood the solidarity of all human interests--that fundamental principle of all moral and political wisdom--knows also that his individual existence is but a drop in the vast stream, and that such a drop has no right to claim absolute independence. ”

“ Because the story of America is the story of people coming together to tear down barriers, stand up for rights, and insist on equality, not only for themselves but for all people. And in the process, they create a community of support and solidarity that endures. ”

“ Having made much of the principles of the solidarity of society, science is now engaged in emphasizing the principle of vicarious service and suffering. The consecrated blood of yesterday is seen to be the social and spiritual capital of to-day. Indeed, the civil, intellectual and religious freedom and hope of our age are only the moral courage and suffering of past ages, reappearing under new and resplendent forms. ”

“ All people, endowed with reason and conscience, must accept a responsibility to each and all, to families and communities, to races, nations, and religions in a spirit of solidarity: What you do not wish to be done to yourself, do not do to others. ”

“ This sense of ultimate oneness is the real meaning of equality, as it is the foundation of social solidarity and the bond which, if genuinely experienced, resists the disruptive force of all conflict, intellectual, religious, and ethical. ”

“ In our own interest then, if not from a higher motive, we must turn to the lifting of our fellows. Our solidarity is already great: let us hold to it and increase it. Far from being a curse it is a people's greatest blessing. ”

“ A time is coming and is perhaps near at hand, when we will see a civilization in which men will satisfy not transcendentally, but according to reason, their need for rest and recreation, for elevation of their ideas, and their longing for emotions; when a solidarity of the human race will be the worship of a progressive and enlightened age. ”

“ I answered, "it is a glorious word, much abused, violently distorted, stupidly misunderstood, but expressing better than any other the purpose of political and economic progress, the aim of the Revolution in this century, the recognition of the great truth that Liberty and Equality, through the law of Solidarity, will cause the welfare of each to contribute to the welfare of all. So good a word cannot be spared, must not be sacrified, shall not be stolen." ”

“ But, in so doing, they have at all times, in the latest as well as the earliest stages of society, been felt to be breaching the very basis of social solidarity, the maintenance of which is the will of the God worshipped by society. ”

“ More recent still, and perhaps equally important, is the idea of the solidarity of the human race and of the responsibility of each nation towards the rest, especially towards the weaker and more backward peoples. We no longer cheerfully and openly exterminate an inferior people ”

“ In the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the means of subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are assured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the struggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is true. ”

“ When society has reached the Positive state, and the sense of universal solidarity is more generally diffused, there will be even more significance and dignity in such expressions than there is now, because the name invoked will no longer be that of a special nation, but that of Humanity as a whole. ”

“ It goes out with the hope that it may help, if ever so infinitesimally, in ridding the human of that terrific instinct of inconsideration toward the sub-human races. Solidarity is its plea, human and universal. ”

“ It is possible, I suggest, to build our society on the principle of solidarity, which in the short term means, as I wrote in Renewing the Republic, "establishing a floor of citizenship below which no citizen would be allowed to fall. ”

“ Now, every Sunday hundreds of pulpits throughout the land are preaching social duty and the solidarity of nations and of humanity; declaring the duty of mutual love and service, whereby the strong are made bondmen to the weak, to be the only key to the social problem. ”

“ But let it be demonstrated that work reorganised will apportion wealth justly, and that the passions, playing freely, will lead to harmony and unity, and then peace will at once ensue, and happiness will be established in a brotherly contract of solidarity. Why should one fight one against the other, when interests cease to clash? ”

“ Simultaneously with this peeling off, of the Old, and disclosure of the New, will of necessity appear — indeed it is taking shape already the blossom of international solidarity and federation — the common cause of Humanity and of Labour liberated over the world. ”

“ The solidarity of the workers vanishes, when the struggle which gave rise to that solidarity ceases. There remains now nothing but the humanitarian principle of the solidarity of the human race. Solidarity has ceased to be an economic fact, and has become purely "ideological." ”

“ Men were drawn by the social order out of merely personal interests into a larger life. In their organizations they were unconsciously groping, as all human organizations are, towards the final solidarity of humanity—the federation of the world. ”

“ The moral solidarity of mankind is dissolved. Sects and parties are increasing; common estimates and ideals keep slipping away [pg 74] from us; we understand one another less and less. Even voluntary associations, that form of unity peculiar to modern times, unite more in achievement than in disposition, bring men together outwardly rather than inwardly. ”

“ The workers will learn at once the solidarity of all workers in a locality and that of all workers in a trade, and, in learning this, they will learn at the same time the complete solidarity of the whole working-class. ”

“ The highest political watchword is not Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, nor yet Solidarity, but Service. ”

“ But that material nature in which the soul is embodied has the dividing quality of the prism, which resolves pure light into distinct rays; and so on earth we get the principle of freedom and the virtue of solidarity as separated ideals continually at warfare with each other, and the reconcilement on earth of these principles in man is the conquest of matter by the spirit. ”

“ Sinking their differences and recognizing one another's rights and interests, the people of such united nations have become accustomed to a large national solidarity, and it ought not to require much instruction or persuasion to show them that what they have accomplished already for themselves is the correct principle for their guidance in world affairs. ”

“ The four ideas, liberty, equality, progress, and human solidarity or universal responsibility, seem to be the leading ideas of the present era, the ideas which, in conjunction with national sentiments, are more than any other, fashioning the future of the world. ”

“ The New World Life.—The social life that started in the family has broadened until it has circled the globe. It is possible now to speak in terms of world life. The interests of society have reached out from country to country, and from zone to zone, just as a child's interests as he grows to manhood expand from the home to the community and from the community to the nation.
The idea of the social solidarity of all peoples is still new. ”

“ All the materials are at hand for an unlimited development of the practical life. The sense of solidarity and the comradeship and helpfulness that grow naturally in a small community, where conditions are hard and dangers imminent, we must still maintain in a great nation by organization. ”

“ By this very fact, it obliges society to find a remedy for every evil that afflicts the individual, because every such evil tends to become social. Solidarity limits our modern societies to the alternative of progress or dissolution. ”

“ The methods you pursue, the new measures for publicity which you have adopted, the increasing confidence you have achieved, and the degree of support, both moral and financial, which you have deservedly earned from the body of the believers are all encouraging signs that testify to the growing solidarity of a Cause destined to confer inestimable benefits upon mankind. ”

“ Just as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall be assured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity will become preponderant.
When in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously, harmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes its appearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us the picture on a large scale. A better social organization will insure universal harmony and mutual good-will. ”

“ Thus grew up the consciousness of human solidarity, the recognition of men's interdependence, the idea of mutual obligation. The result is a wealth of humane activity, which penetrates into all the ramifications of life, attacking and [Pg 116] seeking to eradicate all forms of want and misery, instead of merely helping to relieve individual cases. We encounter the earnest endeavour to impart material and spiritual possessions, as far as possible, to all men; to help and strengthen the less favoured section of humanity ”

“ The problem was how to make the working people realize their spiritual and social solidarity with the rest of the capital and the kingdom; how to revive their sense of citizenship, with its privileges which they have lost, and its responsibilities which they have forgotten. ”

“ The solidarity which it would impart to American society would have its basis in feeling and its results in good fellowship; but it must always remain a promise and constructive ideal rather than a finished performance. The social problem must, as long as societies continue to endure, be solved afresh by almost every generation ”

“ And certain it is that, what we now call the solidarity of mankind, the tendency to look on men rather as the members of a community than as independent individuals, each with an inalienable standing of his own, had a hold of men's minds then such as it has not to-day, certainly among Western nations. To a certain extent, this [173] principle of solidarity is inwoven in the very nature of things, and cannot be eliminated, however we may try. Absolute independence and isolation of individuals are impossible. In families, we suffer for one another's faults, even when we hold them in abhorrence. ”

“ This is to exaggerate the principle of solidarity, to ignore the fact of the great diversity actually observable among existing primitive societies, and the possibility that it was just by avoiding some particular detrimental institution that some of the higher peoples were able to proceed on their path of progress. ”

“ This might be considered rather a tactical argument, but in reality there is no other foundation for morality, and therefore for politics, than respect and love for one another, whether it be called humanity, philanthropy, altruism, sympathy, equality, or solidarity. ”

“ But now that a promise of deliverance offers, more adequate, conceivably, than any heretofore proposed, why, the solidarity of humanity asserts itself; our brother who is bruised is not merely near and dear ”

“ The history of a hundred years has made it plain that nations cannot live in isolation any more than individuals can, and that the tendency toward social solidarity must be the permanent tendency if society is to exist and prosper, even though civilization and peace may be temporarily set back for a generation by war. ”