Quotes by Theodore Dalrymple

About Theodore Dalrymple:

Anthony (A.M.) Daniels is an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the east end of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The world has a lot to thank murderers for, when you come to think of it.

Theodore Dalrymple

[T]he scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them.

Theodore Dalrymple

And secretly I fell prey to the one of the besetting sins of western intellectuals, which normally I abhor: I began to experience envy of suffering, that profoundly dishonest emotion which derives from the foolish notion that only the oppressed can a...

Theodore Dalrymple

Many young people now end a discussion with the supposedly definitive and unanswerable statement that such is their opinion, and their opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. The fact is that our opinion on an infinitely large number of questions ...

Theodore Dalrymple

Parents are perhaps the most common object of resentment, the people who are most frequently blamed for all our failings and failures alike.

Theodore Dalrymple

I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me. Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on the other hand people grow old with rather greater...

Theodore Dalrymple

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

Theodore Dalrymple

To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

Theodore Dalrymple

Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.

Theodore Dalrymple

Facts are much more malleable than prejudices.

Theodore Dalrymple

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...

Theodore Dalrymple

All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.

Theodore Dalrymple

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 ...

Theodore Dalrymple

It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or with...

Theodore Dalrymple

I do not think it possible for anyone to get by in life without prejudice. However, the attempt to do so leads many people to suppose that, in order to decide any moral question, they have to find an indubitable first principle from which they can de...

Theodore Dalrymple

So what exactly are the rewards of resentment. It is always a relief to know that the reason we have failed in life is not because we lack the talent, energy, or determination to succeed, but because of a factor that is beyond our control and that ha...

Theodore Dalrymple

We all resort to the ad hominem from time to time: in human affairs, it is difficult to avoid it, and probably not desirable. After all, our opponents are human. The proper use of an ad hominem argument, however, still requires evidence to back it up...

Theodore Dalrymple

The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao's sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about...

Theodore Dalrymple

Author Bio

  • NameTheodore Dalrymple
  • DescriptionEnglish doctor and writer
  • BornOctober 11, 1949
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionJournalist; Psychiatrist; Author; Conspiracy Theorist