History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.
Malcolm MuggeridgeI wouldn't have said that Anthony Eden was equipped by nature to deal with the situation in the world today. I would have said that he was portentous, sincere, honest and rather stupid.
Malcolm MuggeridgeSex is the mysticism of a materialistic society - in the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word... [it has] its own mysteries - this is my birth [control] pill; swallow it in remembrance of me!
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe "pursuit of happiness" is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.
Malcolm MuggeridgeFor us humans, everything is permanent - until it changes, as we are immortal until we die
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe skyscrapers began to rise again, frailly massive, elegantly utilitarian, images in their grace, audacity and inconclusiveness, of the whole character of the people who produces them.
Malcolm MuggeridgeLike a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south ... I long to be gone.
Malcolm MuggeridgeContrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained
Malcolm MuggeridgeIt's the circumstances of popular monarchy, the manner in which it's developed, and it is also the fault of the people who present her with this unquestioning adulation. In other words, it's their lack of a larger faith. Which makes them fasten onto, a purely earthly symbol.
Malcolm MuggeridgeAmerican Women: How they mortify the flesh in order to make it appetizing! Their beauty is a vast industry, their enduring allure a discipline which nuns or athletes might find excessive.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy, disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition; to the point that to believe today in a miraculous happening like the Virgin Birth is to appear a kind of imbecile.
Malcolm MuggeridgeI am in a slight difficulty because I find myself in a minute minority there, in that this Sputnik didn't either interest me or frighten me, but that's because I don't, you see, believe that the circumstances of life are the important thing.
Malcolm MuggeridgeAll happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.
Malcolm MuggeridgeI think Winston Churchill is an appallingly bad politician, and always has been, that he hung onto power long after he should have done, and that his post-war administration was a disaster.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThere's nothing is this world more instinctively abhorrent to me than finding myself in agreement with my fellow-humans.
Malcolm MuggeridgeIn retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
Malcolm MuggeridgeChristianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe trouble with kingdoms of heaven on earth is that they're liable to come to pass, and then their fraudulence is apparent for all to see. We need a kingdom of heaven in Heaven, if only because it can't be realized.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe greatest artists, saints, philosophers, and, until quite recent times, scientists... have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid.... I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake, and Dostoevsky than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw.
Malcolm MuggeridgeWhatever is fine and permanent in human achievement has been realised through individuals courageously facing the circumstances of their being; and a society is civilised to the extent to which it makes this possible. Terrorism, which aims at putting out thespiritual light, is the antithesis of civilisation.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe three most disastrous inventions of our time have been the birth control pill, the camera and nuclear weaponry. The first offers sex in terms of sterility, the second reality in terms of fantasy, and the third security in terms of destruction.
Malcolm MuggeridgePosterity will surely be amazed, and I hope vastly amused, that such slipshod and unconvincing theorizing should have so easily captivated twentieth-century minds and been so widely and recklessly applied.
Malcolm MuggeridgeI believe that the visit of the Queen to the United States is an admirable occasion to produce an historical, truthful, sincere, genuine analysis of how the British Monarchy evolved into its present situation.
Malcolm MuggeridgeWhat is called Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun. With the Media, especially television, governing all our lives, as they indubitably do, it is easily imaginable that this might happen without our noticing...by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values.
Malcolm MuggeridgeIn the beginning was the Lie and the Lie was made news and dwelt among us, graceless and false.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.
Malcolm MuggeridgeThe truth is that a lost empire, lost power and lost wealth provide perfect circumstances for living happily and contentedly in our enchanted island.
Malcolm MuggeridgePeople think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.
Malcolm MuggeridgeI think it [presidency of Dwight Eisenhower] came too late and I think that he is not on the wavelength of this dreadful time through which we're living.
Malcolm MuggeridgeAccumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story ...man [is] so avid for knowledge that everything that he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology; his love becomes lechery; his wisdom becomes science; pursuing meaning, he ignores truth.
Malcolm Muggeridge