Theodore Dalrymple: Trending quotes (page 5)

“His greatest fear, or nightmare, is not to be thought hip or cool, and if to avoid that terrible fate it means that he has to glamorize evil--well, so be it.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

Fate , Fear , Evil

“Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.”

Theodore Dalrymple

What the New Atheists Don't See http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 2007).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

“I was in the enormous and almost deserted square in front of the Great People's Study House—all open spaces in Pyongyang remain deserted unless filled with parades of hundreds of thousands of human automata—when a young Korean slid surreptitiously up to me and asked, "Do you speak English?"
An electric moment: for in North Korea, unsupervised contact between a Korean and a foreigner is utterly unthinkable, as unthinkable as shouting, "Down with Big Brother!"
"Yes," I replied.
"I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only pleasure of my life."
It was the most searing communication I have ever received in my life. We parted immediately afterward and of course will never meet again. For him, Dickens and Shakespeare (which the regime permitted him to read with quite other ends in view) guaranteed the possibility not just of freedom but of truly human life itself.”

Theodore Dalrymple

The Dystopian Imagination http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 2001).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life , People , Pleasure , Communication

“There is no smoke without fire, and there is no ethically repugnant principle without logic.”

Theodore Dalrymple

How to murder a Bolivian boy http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/jun01/daniels.htm (June 2001).
New Criterion (2000 - 2005)

“In the British public service nothing succeeds like failure: indeed, failure is success, if looked on in the right way, namely as something requiring yet further intervention in people's lives to amend.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Mr Brown's self-esteem issue - or, asks Theodore Dalrymple, does Gordon Brown really believe that he can solve the problems of the world.
Source: The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

People , Way , Failure , Success

“There 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 Dalrymple

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

People , Happiness

“Incidentally, many thousands of American servicemen addicted themselves to heroin in Vietnam, but two years after their repatriation their rate of addiction was no greater than that of draftees who were to go to Vietnam, but never did go because the war had ended.”

Theodore Dalrymple

C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)

War

“In the welfare state, experience teaches nothing.”

Theodore Dalrymple

A Murderess’s Tale http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_1_oh_to_be.html (Winter 2005).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

“For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed.”

Theodore Dalrymple

How PC Boosts Le Pen.
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Law , Democracy , Silence

“What youth considers liberation, maturity considers tasteless excess.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Discovering LaRochefoucauld http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/apr01/laroche.htm (April 2001).
New Criterion (2000 - 2005)

Youth

“Multiculturalism as an official doctrine, complete with enforcing bureaucracies, undermines the rule of law because it seeks to divide people, formalise their cultural differences and enclose them in moral and intellectual ghettoes. As a result, as Bhiku Parekh puts it, ‘The idea of national culture makes little sense.’ But the rule of law requires a common cultural understanding, not merely the means of repression to enforce a legal code. Once that basic cultural understanding is lost, all that remains is repression, effective or ineffective as the case may be, and experienced by many as alien and unjust.”

Theodore Dalrymple

"Why Borders Matter" http://www.spectator.co.uk/2012/09/why-borders-matter/, The Spectator (September 1, 2012).

People , Law , Idea , Understanding

“What is the point of restraint and circumspection, if such stream-of-consciousness vulgarity can win not merely wealth and fame but complete social acceptance?”

Theodore Dalrymple

Uncouth Chic http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 1998).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Wealth

“Education is not a shield against stupidity, much less against brutality. Indeed, one might almost define an intellectual as someone who can witness a massacre and see a principle.”

Theodore Dalrymple

"The Great Hate Debate" https://www.takimag.com/article/the-great-hate-debate, Taki's Magazine (July 13, 2019).

Education , Stupidity

“With carefully nourished resentment, a man can go through his life blaming someone or something else for his failures. This enables him to be a failure and to feel morally superior to the world at the same time.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Source: "Private Clubs and the Sour Pleasures of Resentment" https://www.theepochtimes.com/private-clubs-and-the-sour-pleasures-of-resentment_3956322.html, The Epoch Times (August 19, 2021).

World , Failure , Time , Life

“Humor, fearlessness, seriousness, and honesty: the qualities that are hated with an equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies that are contending for tenure in the humanities departments of our universities.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Migration: Multiculturalism and its Metaphors (2016)

Hate , Universe

“Nothing is easier - or more gratifying - than to apologise for what your ancestors, enemies or political opponents have done or omitted to do. We get the kudos for having apologised, they get the blame for what we apologise for.”

Theodore Dalrymple

Migration: Multiculturalism and its Metaphors (2016)