Theodore Dalrymple Quotes

23 quotes in 549 categories

• Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid?
• In claiming that prohibition, not the drugs themselves, is the problem, Nadelmann and many others - even policemen - have said that "the war on…
• Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.
• There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.
• The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a…
• It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully…
• Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an…
• Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.
• Nonjudgmentalism is not really nonjudgmental. It is the judgment that . . . everything is the same, nothing is better. This is as barbaric and…
• When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.
• The need always to lie and always to avoid the truth stripped everyone of what Custine called 'the two greatest gifts of God-the soul and…
• Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but…
• Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of…
• So what exactly are the rewards of resentment. It is always a relief to know that the reason we have failed in life is not…
• Considering the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it does, it receives scant attention from psychiatrists and psychologists. Resentment is a great…
• To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
• The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in…
• If the history of the 20th Century proved anything, it proved that however bad things were, human ingenuity could usually find a way to make…
• It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on…
• All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.

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