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.
Theodore DalrympleA curious reversal in the locus of moral concern has taken place: people feel responsible for everything except for what they do.
Theodore DalrympleWhen every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.
Theodore DalrympleLife is a biography, not a series of disconnected moments, more or less pleasurable but increasingly tedious and unsatisfying unless one imposes a purposive pattern upon them.
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 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