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

If consequences are removed from enough actions, then the very concept of human agency evaporates, life itself becomes meaningless, and is thenceforth a vacuum in which people oscillate between boredom and oblivion.

The refusal of free inquiry derives from an awareness of the fragility of the basis of religious faith; and since certainty is psychologically preferable to truth, the former often being willfully mistaken for the latter, anything that threatens certainty is anathematized with fury.

The victory over cruelty is never final, but, like the maintenance of freedom, requires eternal vigilance.