The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.

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 our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control.

Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.

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 loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.