Scott > Scott's Quotes

“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find:”
― Samuel Johnson

“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.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“Out of the seven billion people now living on the earth, there are about fifty thousands souls who agree with these settlers. Practically everybody else is certain that they are the greatest obstacle to peace. Personally, I have never understood why. Let’s say that the land is divided between Arabs and Jews, and let’s say that the Arabs get the whole of the West Bank. Why, I want to know, can’t the Jews still live there? There are millions of Arabs living in proper Israel, why can’t a few Jews with skullcaps live with the Arabs? In what book of law is it decreed that a land must be free of Jews? Anyway, I go to meet the”
― Tuvia Tenenbom, Catch The Jew!: Eye-opening education - You will never look at Israel the same way again

“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“There is a very simple, very beautiful Native American story I have always remembered. In this story a grandfather is telling his young grandson about life. He tells the little boy that in every person there are two wolves, who live in one's breast and who are always at war with each other. The first wolf is very aggressive and full of violence and hate toward the world. The second wolf is peaceful and full of light and love. The little boy anxiously asks his grandfather which wolf wins. The grandfather replies, "The one you feed.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
― George Orwell

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
― Ronald Reagan

“To be free, above all, was to be free from enslavement to one’s own basest desires, which could never be fulfilled, and the pursuit of which could only foster ceaseless craving and discontent.”
― Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s prescient warning that prohibiting incitement to hatred under international human rights law “would encourage governments to punish all criticism under the guise of protecting against religious or national hostility” has been forgotten.
--Jacob Mchangama, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media”
― Jacob Mchangama

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“It’s not food. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. Joseph Joubert I”
― Justin Brierley, Unbelievable?: Why after ten years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian