All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.

[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.

We all resort to the ad hominem from time to time: in human affairs, it is difficult to avoid it, and probably not desirable. After all, our opponents are human. The proper use of an...

Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.

I do not think it possible for anyone to get by in life without prejudice. However, the attempt to do so leads many people to suppose that, in order to decide any moral question, they...

Facts are much more malleable than prejudices.

The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao’s sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though...

The world has a lot to thank murderers for, when you come to think of it.

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...

I have the not altogether unsatisfying impression that civilisation is collapsing around me.Is it my age, I wonder, or the age we live in? I am not sure. Civilisations do collapse, after all, but on...

It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life...

Considering the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it does, it receives scant attention from psychiatrists and psychologists. Resentment is a great rationalizer: it presents us with selected versions of our own...

So what exactly are the rewards of resentment. It is always a relief to know that the reason we have failed in life is not because we lack the talent, energy, or determination to succeed,...

Many young people now end a discussion with the supposedly definitive and unanswerable statement that such is their opinion, and their opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s. The fact is that our opinion...

To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.

Parents are perhaps the most common object of resentment, the people who are most frequently blamed for all our failings and failures alike.

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