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 achieve righteousness or - more importantly - write anything profound. Theodore Dalrymple
Some Similar Quotes
  1. You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid–and I know they are–yet I won't be wiser? - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  2. Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say "This silk is fake! I thought... - C. Joybell C.

  3. If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? - Laurence J. Peter

  4. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. - George Carlin

  5. In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. - Unknown

More Quotes By Theodore Dalrymple
  1. To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

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

  3. 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 by instruments, so ideologists find anything that...

  4. Demonstrative proof is lacking, but if we thought only about those things about which such proof were available, our minds would be empty most of the time.

  5. [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.

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