Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers, was an American writer and editor. After his early years as a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he renounced communism, became an outspoken opponent, and testified at Alger Hiss's perjury and espionage trial. He described both events in his book Witness, published in 1952...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth1 April 1901
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
Communism in our time can no more be considered apart from the crisis clan a fever can be acted upon apart from an infected body.
That is why this terrible book is also a book of hope For it is about the struggle of the human soul - of more than one human soul.
At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another.
Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death.
At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts.
I do not know any way to explain why God's grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it.
I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time - Communism and Freedom - came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men.
I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.
My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.
In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.
The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.
Man without mysticism is a monster.
True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.