The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue … - Theodore Dalrymple

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Plan B is if Hillary [Clinton] is indicted. Then, even if I missed the deadlines for the first couple of primaries, I'll be there to rescue the party. All bets are off.

Theodore Dalrymple

The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

Belief, Loss, Men, Realistic, Religious, Understanding

Same Author Quotes

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 that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about human nature.

Beautiful, Character, Mention, Thinking, Though, Written

The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one's whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.

Begins, Enslaved, Human, Ideas, Law, Men

Life is a biography, not a series of disconnected moments, more or less pleasurable but increasingly tedious and unsatisfying unless one imposes a purposive pattern upon them.

Biographies, Biography, Life, Life Is, Patterns, Pleasurable

Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.

Benign, Habit, Ingrained, Obeying, Order

Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control.

Age, Drunkenness, Gambling, Garden, Loss, Said