Theodore Dalrymple Quotes

cultural critic and author

Anthony Daniels (born 11 October 1949) is an English writer and retired physician (prison doctor and psychiatrist) who frequently uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple.

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Alternative Names: Anthony Malcolm Daniels • Anthony Daniels • Anthony M. Daniels • A. M. Daniels

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Truth is not the first casualty of war alone: it is the first casualty of populism.

It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.

Modernity is the most transient of qualities.

If a lack of money had prevented people from improving their lot, then mankind would still be living in the caves: unless you believe that investment capital first arrived from outer space.

Whereas fortitude was once regarded as a virtue, it has come to be regarded as a kind of reprehensible and deliberate obtuseness, to be utterly condemned as treason to the self (there is no fury like a non-judgmentalist scorned).

To deal with the problems of modern society, hard thought, confrontation with an often unpleasant reality, and moral courage are needed, for which a vague and self-congratulatory broadmindedness is no substitute.

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

What youth considers liberation, maturity considers tasteless excess.

The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man’s existence.

There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

It is hard to oppose an ideology with a tradition.

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

The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction.

When the cold war ended, I thought, as no doubt did many others, that the age of ideology was over. Again like many others, I underestimated man’s need for transcendence, which, in the absence of religion or high culture, he is most likely to find in a political or social cause.

Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.