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Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple Quotes

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Famous Theodore Dalrymple Quotes

“There is a curious phenomenon in Western intellectual life, namely that of being right at the wrong time. To be right at the wrong time is far, far worse than having been wrong for decades on end. In the estimation of many intellectuals, to be right at the wrong time is the worst possible social faux pas; like telling an off-colour joke at the throning of a bishop. In short, it is in unforgivable bad taste. There was never a good time, for example, to be anti-communist. Those who early warned of the dangers of bolshevism were regarded as lacking in compassion for the suffering of the masses under tsarism, as well as lacking the necessary imagination to “build” a better world. Then came the phase of denial of the crimes of communism, when to base one’s anti-communism on such phenomena as organised famine and the murder of millions was regarded as the malicious acceptance of ideologically-inspired lies and calumnies. When finally the catastrophic failure of communism could no longer be disguised, and all the supposed lies were acknowledged to have been true, to be anti-communist became tasteless in a different way: it was harping on pointlessly about what everyone had always known to be the case. The only good anti-communist was a mute anti-communist.”

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Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“What do we mean by poverty? Not what Dickens or Blake or Mayhew meant. Today no one seriously expects to go hungry in England or to live without running water or medical care or even TV. Poverty has been redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of the income distribution is poor ex officio, as it were-poor by virtue of having less than the rich. And of course by this logic, the only way of eliminating poverty is by an egalitarian redistribution of wealth-even if the society as a whole were to become poorer as a result.”

PovertySqualorPoverty LineRelative Poverty And Wealth
Book:Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
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“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate. In this sense, the less true it was, the less it corresponded in any way to reality, the better; the more it contradicted the experience of the persons to whom it was directed, the more docile, self-despising for their failure to protest, and impotent they became.”

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Book:The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World
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“Those who are not satisfied with their work, or who have no intellectual or cultural interests, and whose coarse emotions have undergone refinement neither by education nor by adherence to civilized custom, are particularly liable to seek out the compensatory complications of domestic disorder and disarray.”

CulturePsychologySociology
Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses
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“Needless to say, the self-hatred of Western intellectuals is not genuine or sincere: they do not really want to beat our supermarkets into souks, as swords into ploughshares ... Rather, the intellectual's expression of self-hatred is directed at other Western intellectuals, to prove the self-hater's broadness of mind, moral superiority and lack of prejudice, and thus earn the approval of his peers. It isn't only rebellious youth who experience peer pressure... Unfortunately, insincere ideas can become official orthodoxies, with very real consequences. The Muslims of this country are hardly to blame if they do not realise that the posturings of our intellectuals are just that, posturings, not intended to be taken literally. When the intellectuals of this country express no admiration for or appreciation of the cultural achievements of their civilisation's past, when only denigration and iconoclasm appear to advance an intellectual's career, when moral stature is measured by the vehemence of denunciation of past or present abuses, real or imagined, it is hardly surprising that Muslims conclude that the West is eminently hateful; it must be, because it hates itself. They haven't heard of Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess.”

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Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“Miserabilism leads to a mixture of indifference towards the past and hatred of it. This hatred is visible in the architecture and urban planning of Europe since the war. [...] This mania for destruction, often carried out in lesser degrees by the strategic placement of a terrible building that the eye cannot escape (the Tour Montparnasse in Paris is a particularly fine example of the genre), is a symptom of an impotent rage that Europe has been left behind, is not longer in the vanguard of anything. It is also a kind of magical thinking: that by adopting the externals of modernity somehow modernity itself will be achieved and mastered.”

ModernismUrban PlanningModern Architecture
Book:The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism
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“Just as Leninists knew what was good for the proletariat, thereby conferring on themselves a gratifyingly providential role, so the environmentalists now know what is good for humanity and likewise confer on themselves a providential role. The beauty of preservation of the environment as a cause is that it is so large that it would justify almost any ends used to achieve it, for a livable environment is the sine qua non of everything else. You can demonstrate and riot for the good of humanity to your heart’s content; your questions about what life is for are answered.”

Climate ChangeEnvironmentalists
Book:The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism
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“Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation.”

MusicIdeologyIdeologiesSchubertArt TheoryCultural TheoryFranz Schubert
Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“Trying to eliminate antipathy, dislike, ridicule, and insult from the human heart and mind is a task to make that of Sisyphus seem like an afternoon stroll: precisely the type of task that authoritarian governments love, for it gives them the locus standi to interfere ever more intimately with the lives of their subjects. Hatred is hydra-headed, the task is never done, it grows with its very elimination, or rather the attempts by government at its elimination. Failure is the greatest success, since it requires ever more of the same, namely control over society.”

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Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“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.”

PeopleWayLyingEvilForceEasyLosesSocietyLosingStandingSilentOneselfObviousSensesResistanceDestroyedRepeatsLiarsControlledCooperationResistingErodeProbity
Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“I've heard a hundred different variations of instances of unadulterated female victimhood, yet the silence of the feminists is deafening. Where two pieties--feminism and multi-culturalism--come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

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Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses
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“Considering the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it does, it receives scant attention from psychiatrists and psychologists. Resentment is a great rationalizer: it presents us with selected versions of our own past, so that we do not recognize our own mistakes and avoid the necessity to make painful choices.”

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Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“In claiming that prohibition, not the drugs themselves, is the problem, Nadelmann and many others - even policemen - have said that "the war on drugs is lost." But to demand a yes or no answer to the question "Is the war against drugs being won?" is like demanding a yes or no answer to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Never can an unimaginative and fundamentally stupid metaphor have exerted a more baleful effect upon proper thought.”

SaidWarProblemLostAnswersWifeEffectsStupidDrugDemandMetaphorLibertarianPolicemenProhibitionWar On DrugsYes Or No
Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses
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“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.”

MenHumansEarthChoicesBeliefUnderstandingReligiousLossPleasureVirtueConditionsHuman NatureCreaturesGainsPerfectionEndlessFallenComparisonSubstitutesRealisticHuman ConditionSecularExtensionsSophistication
Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses
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“Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems.”

PeopleMenWorldWayHumansTwoCharacterFeelingsProblemIndividualForceSocialHuman BeingsConsciousnessMoralClassSawsCircumstancesSolutionsWeaknessInstancePersistProposeTwo WaysSnowflakeStrength And WeaknessSocial ProblemsAvalanchesMoral Strength
Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“The 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.”

PeopleNeedsTwoSoulLyingResultsFateSpeechDestructionSilentCommunicateCynicalIndifferentCunningGreatest GiftsGift From GodHypocritical
Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for 14 year olds now to establish friendships with 26 year olds - because they know by the age of 14 all they are ever going to know.”

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Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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“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.”

SaidSelfMightAgeSocialLossResultsCommonExampleGardenCharacteristicsCollectivesGamblingSelf ControlDefiningObesityDrunkennessRudenessPromiscuityAnti Social
Author:Theodore Dalrymple
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