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Clarence Darrow Zitate
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Clarence Seward Darrow war ein US-amerikanischer Rechtsanwalt. Er war darüber hinaus ein führendes Mitglied der US-amerikanischen Bürgerrechtsorganisation American Civil Liberties Union.

Darrow wurde durch einige Aufsehen erregende Prozesse bekannt, unter anderem durch seine Verteidigung der jungen Mörder Leopold und Loeb im Verfahren um die Ermordung des 14-jährigen Bobby Franks und durch die Verteidigung von John Thomas Scopes im so genannten Scopes-Prozess, bei dem er dem berühmten Staatsanwalt William Jennings Bryan gegenüberstand. Berühmt wurde ebenso der Freispruch für Ossian Sweet. Darrow war bekannt für seinen scharfen Verstand, sein Mitgefühl und auch für seinen Agnostizismus. Er gilt als einer der berühmtesten amerikanischen Anwälte und Bürgerrechtler. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. April 1857 – 13. März 1938   •   Andere Namen Clarence Seward Darrow
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Clarence Darrow: Zitate auf Englisch

“Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.
Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today.”

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Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

“History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.”

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Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas For Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter, p. 248

“The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and unwilling serfs.”

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Clarence Darrow

Quelle: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 27

“Had the modern professors of eugenics had power in France in 1694, they probably would not have permitted such a child to have been born. Their scientific knowledge would have shown conclusively that no person of value could have come from the union of his father and mother. In those days, nature had not been instructed by the professors of eugenics and so Voltaire was born.”

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Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

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Clarence Darrow

Quelle: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”

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The Railroad Trainman (November 1909)

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

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Voltaire (1916)

“Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought — even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.”

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Quelle: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 12

“The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.”

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Address to the court in "The Communist Trial", People v. Lloyd (1920)

“I was truly sorry for Mr. Bryan. But I consoled myself by thinking of the years through which he had busied himself tormenting intelligent professors with impudent questions about their faith, and seeking to arouse the ignoramuses and bigots to drive them out of their positions.”

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Quelle: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 267

“I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.”

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As quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)

“That men should ‘turn the other cheek,’ should ‘love their enemies,’ should ‘resist not evil,’ has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays, to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for strong characters or great states. p. 13”

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Clarence Darrow

Resist Not Evil (1904)

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”

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Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (13 July 1925)

“When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature. We no longer cure disease by casting out devils.”

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Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

“Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.”

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Clarence Darrow

Quelle: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 1 "Before The Beginning"

“I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.”

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Clarence Darrow

As quoted in a eulogy for Darrow http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/darrow1.htm by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)

“I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.”

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Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" by Peter McWilliams, from 2000 Years of Disbelief (1996) edited by James A Haught p. 817

“In Geneva lived Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He too was a rebel, mighty in war. Voltaire was keener, wittier, deeper, greater. Rousseau was more fiery, emotional, passionate. Both were really warriors in the same great cause. From their different places, three miles apart, both sent forth their thunderbolts to wake a sleeping world. When the world awakened and shook itself, churches, thrones, institutions, laws, and customs were buried in the wreck. Some charged the wreck to Voltaire, some to Rousseau.”

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Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.”

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Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Improving the Quality of Life for the Black Elderly: Challenges and Opportunities : Hearing before the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, first session, September 25, 1987 (1988)
This quote's earliest known source is from Leon C. Megginson (see Charles Darwin)
Misattributed

“Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.”

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Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

“In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.”

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Funeral oration for John Peter Altgeld (14 March 1902); published in an appendix to The Story of My Life (1932)

“Whatever else he was during his life, he was never dull, and the world forgives almost anything but stupidity.”

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Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“Pensions are the favors of the powerful, and dangerous to any great intellect. It is only here and there down throughout the ages that a Voltaire is born who does not fall a victim to their blandishments.”

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Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“To disband the armies and destroy the forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place of war and strife, could tend only to the buidling up of character, the elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state.”

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Quelle: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 39

“When Voltaire was bornreally but one church which, of course, was ignorant, tyrannical and barbarous in the extreme. All creeds are alike, and whenever there is but one, and the rulers honestly believe in that one, they are bound to be ignorant, barbarous and cruel. All sorts of heresies were punishable by death. If anyone dared to write a pamphlet or book that questioned any part of the accepted faith, the book was at once consigned to flames and the author was lucky if he did not meet the same fate. Religion was not maintained by the precepts of the priest, but by the prison, the torture chamber and the fagot. Everyone believed; no one questioned. The religious creeds, while strict and barbarous, did not interfere with the personal conduct of any of the rulers. They were left free to act as they pleased, so long as they professed to believe in the prevailing faith.”

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Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“Judge: Do you want Mr. Bryan sworn?”

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Scopes Trial (1925)

“All men do the best they can. But none meet life honestly and few heroically.”

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Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Infidels and Heretics : An Agnostic's Anthology (1929) edited by Clarence Darrow and Wallace Rice, p. 206

“There are two things that kill a genius — a fatal disease and contentment. When a man is contented he goes to sleep. Voltaire had no chance to be contented, and so he wrote eternally and unceasingly, more than any other man in the history of the world.”

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Voltaire (1916)

“Hell, that's why they make erasers.”

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On mistakes, reported in Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense (1941), p. 75

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