The Confidence Trick

The purpose of the confidence man is not to convince skeptics but to help others to believe what they already want to believe. Displaying the paraphernalia of evidence, embellished with appropriate rhetoric, accomplished that important purpose. —Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 123

Tradition

Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. —Will and Ariel Durant: The Lessons of History (New York: Simon & Schuster. 1968). p. 35

Rational Markets

Chicago School economists found the market more rational and more responsive than the Keynesians had assumed—and the government less so, at least in the sense of promoting the national interest, as distinguished from promoting the careers of politicians. —Thomas Sowell.

More from Theodore Dalrymple

liberals habitually measure their own moral standing and worth by their degree of theoretical hatred for and opposition to whatever exists 

the minister of education may propose but the bureaucracy disposes 

small man is to be defended only so long as he consents to remain a victim, in need of publicly funded ministrations 

misery increases to meet the means available for its alleviation.

the poor are a goldmine 

the established church is on the verge of extinction, its bishops straining vainly after modernity by signing on to the fashionable sociological untruths of a couple of decades ago 

when every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude 

the squalor of England is not economic but spiritual, moral, and cultural 

 —Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Malcolm Daniels), Life at the Bottom; and Our Culture, What's Left of It.

Freedom

It is a mistake to suppose that all men want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong. Implicitly they disagree with Bacon's famous dictum that "chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands." Instead they experience themselves as putty in the hands of fate. —Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom

Doing Nothing

At least a fifth of our working time is spent doing nothing, or rather nothing productive. Most people are incapable of doing nothing, in the strict sense that a meditator does nothing. Moreover, much of their activity may not merely be unproductive but positively counterproductive, in so far as most people at work feel obliged to do something. If not only offices, but millions of journeys to offices, become unnecessary, pollution would decline and leisure time would increase. This latter would be a disaster, since most people do not know what to do with themselves as it is. It is for this reason that work is not arranged as efficiently as possible, but its productive aspect is diluted by myriad unnecessary tasks—unnecessary, that is, from the narrow point of view of production. A great deal of work is designed to keep us occupied while we produce nothing. It ameliorates boredom and prevents the bad behaviour in which boredom results. —Theodore Dalrymple

Women

Women never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is, always, the one which first presents itself to them. —Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Fatal Sequence

The ancient systole and diastole of history has repeated itself in country after country:
Bondage to Spiritual Faith;
Spiritual Faith to Courage;
Courage to Freedom;
Freedom to Abundance;
Abundance to Selfishness;
Selfishness to Complacency;
Complacency to Apathy;
Apathy to Fear;
Fear to Dependency;
Dependency to Bondage.
—Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company.

Unbelief

Unbelief is easier than belief, less demanding and in fact subtly flattering, because the agnostic feels himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And unbelief haunted by faith produces a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involves real suffering. - Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water p300

Tedious Sophistry

Since it is contrary to the spirit of our organization to produce closely coherent works or greater wholes, since it is not our purpose to labor upon a Tower of Babel, which God in His righteousness can descend upon and destroy, since we are conscious of the fact that this confusion of tongues happened justly, recognizing it as a characteristic of all human striving in its truth, that it is fragmentary, and that it is precisely this which separates it from nature’s infinite coherence; that the wealth of an individual consists precisely in the energy he shows in producing the fragmentary, and that that which brings enjoyment to the producing individual also brings enjoyment to the receiving individual, not the troublesome and meticulous execution, nor the tedious apprehension of this execution, but the production and enjoyment of the gleaming transitoriness, which for the producer contains something more than the thorough execution, since it is the appearance of the Idea, and for the recipient, it contains something more, since its fulguration awakens his own productivity–since, I say, all this is contrary to the purpose of our organization, moreover, since the period just read must be regarded as a serious attempt in the interjectory style, wherein the ideas break out without breaking through, which in our organization has an official status: then I shall, after having called attention to the fact that my procedure still cannot be called rebellious, since the bonds which hold the sentence together are so loose that the intermediary clauses stand out aphoristically and arbitrarily enough, merely call to mind that my style has made an attempt apparently to be what it is not–revolutionary.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or