Theodore Dalrymple
Anthony Malcolm Daniels, who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, 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.
Daniels is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, where he is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow. In addition to City Journal, his work has appeared in The British Medical Journal, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, National Review, and Axess magasin.
In 2011, Dalrymple received the 2011 Freedom Prize from the Flemish think tank Libera!.
“It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.”
“I sometimes astonish my patients by telling them that it is far more important that they should be able to lose themselves than that they should be able to find themselves. For it is only in losing oneself that one does find oneself.”
“If the history of the 20th Century proved anything, it proved that however bad things were, human ingenuity could usually find a way to make them worse.”
“The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in their power to improve, but do not imagine themselves to be saviours. In their humble struggle is true heroism.”
“When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.”
“There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.”
“Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.”
“[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.”
“The world has a lot to thank murderers for, when you come to think of it.”
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
“To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.”