Dishonesty Is the Second-Best Policy Quotes

“Only a homeopath could believe that such a microscopic quantity of justice could have any beneficial effect.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Ukippers have spent decades convinced that the anger and dissatisfaction they felt, with which their lives were infused, was caused by one thing. And now the thing has gone. What if they feel the same? A crushing realisation for them, but also for the rest of us. Their misdirected zeal could easily have tipped the balance in the referendum. So excuse the compl(rem)aining,”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“We’re in touch with the zeitgeist, but are too down-to-earth to be impressed. Who doesn’t want to come across like that?”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“like commerce-smothering death-pastry, and then throughout the world, and that ultimately all other ways of buying anything at all will cease and everyone will stay holed up in their homes in feverish anticipation of the next drone-borne aid parcel.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“If we all just settle into small, mutually ignorant online support groups exchanging comforting half-truths, then civilisation is in for a rough ride. No one will know what is really going on, and working out what is really going on has, for most of history, been humankind’s main purpose. Losing that is a high price to pay for being able to order pizza without speaking to anyone.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“In an increasingly virtual world, feelings are as valid as facts.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Things don’t always get better over time. But I’m grateful to have lived through an era when it was still widely assumed that they did.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“But I’m grateful to have lived through an era when it was still widely assumed that they did.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Fundamentally, Halloween is a humorous reversal. We take bad, frightening or horrific things and treat them as if they’re good because it’s a funny thing to do. That’s not a step into genuine darkness at all. It relies completely on a shared moral compass.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Old bullies make way for new. But ageing and mortality must hurt all the more if you’ve made a profession out of praising novelty.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Comedy and nuance are just collateral damage in the corporation’s ploy to try to look like it doesn’t wish to deceive you.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“in a context of almost complete religious freedom, many of us rely on similar back-of-an-envelope answers to eternal questions, because adopting the answers thousands of full-time ponderers have come up with over thousands of years feels like squandering that freedom.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“All cynical and dubious and sceptical and multicultural – getting through life without any agreed view regarding the undisprovable void that lies at the end of it. It felt valiant and pioneering and futuristic, like the Crystal Palace or Concorde or trying to get by without owning a printer.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

“Couscous salad is much better than no food at all but, on the modern culinary battlefield, it’s a mere flint-headed arrow to the state-of-the-art cruise missile that is a fried-egg sandwich.”
― David Mitchell, Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By