The Wilder Shores of Marx Quotes

“The worth of a cause is not necessarily proportional to the lengths to which people will go to promote it.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World

“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, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World

“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate. In this sense, the less true it was, the less it corresponded in any way to reality, the better; the more it contradicted the experience of the persons to whom it was directed, the more docile, self-despising for their failure to protest, and impotent they became.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World

“I had hoped for a rich crop of eccentrics among them, such as I had encountered at the annual general meeting of the Anglo-Albanian Society in London a month previously. The secretary of the society was a retired optician from Ilford who had discovered the Balkan paradise late in life and learnt its language; the rank and file of the society seemed either elderly revolutionaries of the upper classes, who knew the key to world history yet somehow had never learnt how to do up their shirt buttons properly, or lonely, embittered proletarian autodidacts, who dreamed of vengeance upon the world and called it love of humanity.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“It is one thing for traditions to die out of themselves; it is quite another for them to be killed by men who think they know everything, by men whose vengeance extends even to the past, even to the dead.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“Under communism all minorities dance.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World

“within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities.”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“If the Albanian Museum of Atheism followed its Soviet prototype, the exhibits would have traced the ascent of Man from amoebae to Enver Hoxha. We”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“A country that was able to suppress religion entirely and executed dissenters on the merest suspicion was unable to get welders to wear goggles. At”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate.”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“I prefer my saints to live in caves and not to try to impose their standards on the world: for single-mindedness is a cold virtue.”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World

“It is countries with no dissent, which live in the quiet of the grave, that are vulnerable and fragile.”
― Anthony Daniels, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World