There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.
Theodore DalrympleWhere a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.
Theodore DalrympleWhen people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
Theodore DalrympleThere is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.
Theodore DalrympleThe loss of the religious understanding of the human conditionโthat Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainableโis a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substituteโthe belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasuresโis not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.
Theodore DalrympleThe 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 the speech which communicates it.' People became hypocritical, cunning, mistrustful, cynical, silent, cruel, and indifferent to the fate of others as a result of the destruction of their own souls.
Theodore Dalrymple