Hu Shih Quotes

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth, can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual.responsibility.

Facing Wine Never refuse wine. I'm telling you, people come smiling in spring winds: peach and plum like old friends, their open blossoms scattering toward me, singing orioles in jade-green trees, and moonlight probing gold winejars. Yesterday we were flush with youth, and today, white hair's an onslaught. Bramble's overgrown Shih-hu Temple, and deer roam Ku-su Terrace ruins: it's always been like this, yellow dust choking even imperial gates closed in the end. If you don't drink wine, where are those ancient people now?

They had been able to criticise the Beijing government publicly without fear of retribution. In 1929, a number of prominent liberals spoke out in a collection of essays called On Human Rights. Hu Shih, the leading liberal of the day, wrote that his fellow countrymen had already been through a ‘liberation of the mind’, but now ‘the collaboration of the Communists and the Nationalists has created a situation of absolute dictatorship and our freedoms of thought and speech are being lost. Today we may disparage God, but may not criticise Sun Yat-sen. We don’t have to go to Sunday church services, but we have to attend the weekly [Sun] Commemorative Service and read the Sun Yat-sen Testament.’ ‘The freedom we want to establish is the freedom to criticise the Nationalist party and to criticise Sun Yat-sen. Even the Almighty can be criticised, why can’t the Nationalists and Sun Yat-sen?’ And, ‘The Nationalist government is deeply unpopular, partly because its political system fell far short of people’s expectations, and partly because its corpse-like ideology failed to

1. Speak only when you have something to say. 2. Speak what you want to say and say it in the way you want to say it. 3. Speak what is your own and not that of someone else. 4. Speak in the language of the time in which you live. (A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform)

As the controversy between [D. T.] Suzuki and [Chinese historian] Hu Shih suggests, the history of Chan/Zen is the product of two distincts milieux, the Buddhist institutions and the academic world. Serving as relay stations between these two circles are Buddhist institutions such as Komazawa University in Tokyo and Hanazono College in Kyoto, respectively affiliated with the Sōtō and Rinzai sects.