Humor is practically the only thing about which the English are utterly serious. Malcolm Muggeridge More Quotes by Malcolm Muggeridge More Quotes From Malcolm Muggeridge I have had my television aerials removed. It is the moral equivalent of a prostate operation. Malcolm Muggeridge operationsmoraltelevision In his own lifetime Jesus made no impact on history. This is something that I cannot but regard as a special dispensation on God's part, and, I like to think, yet another example of the ironical humour which informs so many of His purposes. To me, it seems highly appropriate that the most important figure in all history should thus escape the notice of memoirists, diarists, commentators, all the tribe of chroniclers who even then existed Malcolm Muggeridge impactjesusthinking History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that. Malcolm Muggeridge realevilpeople I regard myself as a religious... the temper of my mind as religious, and because I regard the temper of my mind as religious, I am profoundly skeptical about any form of human authority, any form of human self-importance. Malcolm Muggeridge religiousselfmind [Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom. Malcolm Muggeridge beautifulmenwar When the devil makes his offer (always open incidentally) of the kingdoms of the earth, it is the bordellos which glow so alluringly to most of us, not the banks and the counting-houses and the snow-swept corridors of power . . . Sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society - in the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word; with its own mysteries - this is my birth pill; swallow it in remembrance of me! - and its own sacred texts and scriptures - the erotica which fall like black atomic rain on the just and unjust alike, drenching us, stupefying us. To be carnally minded is life! Malcolm Muggeridge rainsexfall On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates Malcolm Muggeridge pianomusicmen There's far more truth in the Book of Genesis than in the quantum theory. Malcolm Muggeridge quantumtheorybook It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. Malcolm Muggeridge successbeautifulwar Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time. Malcolm Muggeridge ableageretirement Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. Malcolm Muggeridge ageeducationschool The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment. Malcolm Muggeridge longingfocuscrosses The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. Malcolm Muggeridge spiritualmenscience Like a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south ... I long to be gone. Malcolm Muggeridge migrantsbirdlong In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth. Malcolm Muggeridge selfishearthexercise The only thing that really teaches one what life's about the joy of understanding, the joy of coming in contact with what life really signifies - is suffering, affliction. Malcolm Muggeridge understandingsufferingjoy In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant. Malcolm Muggeridge bellstableslong I never met a rich man who was happy, but I have only very occasionally met a poor man who did not want to become a rich man. Malcolm Muggeridge wanthappinessmen One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries - Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history. Malcolm Muggeridge intelligentreligioustwo The dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy, disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition; to the point that to believe today in a miraculous happening like the Virgin Birth is to appear a kind of imbecile. Malcolm Muggeridge educationalmediabelieve
