Anthony Daniels
English writer and retired physician who frequently uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple.
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.
It seems that when an impending catastrophe will affect them personally, in their very flesh and blood, intellectuals start to think more clearly about the legal and institutional prerequisites of a free society.
There is nothing an official hates more than a person who makes up his own mind.
It is strange, is it not, how the more strenuously we deny the importance of race in human affairs, the more obsessed with it and the touchier on the subject we grow.
Henceforth, virtue was not the exercise of discipline, self-control or benevolence for the sake of others, but the expression of the right opinions of the moment.
Political abstractions can disguise or change the meaning of the most elementary realities.
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?”
We are like creatures so dazzled with our own technological prowess that we no longer think it necessary to consider the obvious.
When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.
I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.
There is no such thing, wrote Oscar Wilde, as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Presumably, then, Mein Kampf would have been all right had it been better written.
In the welfare state, experience teaches nothing.
It is easy to be lenient at other people's expense, and call it generosity of mind.
In Britain, journalists often view comparisons with our society going back two, three, or seven centuries as more relevant than comparisons going back two, three, or seven decades. Drunkenness centuries ago is more illuminating than comparative sobriety 30 years ago. The distant past, selectively mined for evidence that justifies our current conduct, becomes more important than living memory.
Henceforth, there is to be no testing oneself against the best, with the possibility, even the likelihood, of failure: instead, one is perpetually to immerse oneself in the tepid bath of self-esteem, mutual congratulation, and benevolence toward all.
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.
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?
Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.
The victory over cruelty is never final, but, like the maintenance of freedom, requires eternal vigilance.
Children in school are not students, they are pupils. It is typical of certain kinds of politicians that they should regard children as adults, the better subsequently, and consequently, to regard adults as children.