When 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.

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.

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 them worse.

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

Nonjudgmentalism is not really nonjudgmental. It is the judgment that . . . everything is the same, nothing is better. This is as barbaric and untruthful a doctrine as has yet emerged from the fertile mind of man.

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

Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.