92 Quotes by Theodore Dalrymple

For them, the real and most pressing question raised by any social problem is: ‘How do I appear concerned and compassionate to all my friends, colleagues, and peers?

No man was more sensitive than Zweig to the destructive effects upon individual liberty of the demands of large or strident collectivities. He would have viewed with horror the cacophony of monomanias – sexual, racial, social, egalitarian – that marks the intellectual life of our societies, each monomaniac demanding legislative restriction on the freedom of others in the name of a supposed greater, collective good.

And once again sentimentality seems to be dialectically related to violence and brutality, in imagination if not in deed.

Restraints upon our natural inclinations, which left to themselves do not automatically lead us to do what is good for us and often indeed lead us to evil, are not only necessary; they are the indispensable condition of civilized existence.

Equality of Ugliness: If we can’t all live in a beautiful place we must all live in an ugly place.

I learned early in my life that if people were offered the opportunity of tranquility, they often reject it and choose torment instead.

Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid?

Where two pieties – feminism and multiculturalism – come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.

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.