Malcolm Muggeridge citáty

„Jídlo, krása, pilulky a benzín, to jsou čtyři sloupy, na kterých dnes spočívá život. Jsou to čtyři apokalyptičtí jezdci druhé poloviny našeho století.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„Majestátně prostým gestem, díky nimž byl Napoleon tak úspěšný generál, umístila ve výloze svého salonu oznámení, že pro americké vojáky jsou vůně zdarma. Američané stáli frontu na Chanel N 5, a kdyby jí francouzská policie zkřivila vlas, vyvolali by skandál.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

o Coco Chanel po osvobození Paříže
Zdroj: [Chaneyová, Lisa, 2014, Coco Chanel, Eroika, 325, 978-80-87409-27-5]

„I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

„If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„You see, when I was young, people used to say the poor had too many children.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

Or, at the time of the famine in Ireland, they would say that the Irish had too many children. We were taking the food from Ireland, and the Irish were starving, and we said they were starving because they had too many children. Now we who are sated, who have to adopt the most extravagant and ridiculous devices to consume what we produce, while watching whole vast populations getting hungrier and hungrier, overcome our feelings of guilt by persuading ourselves that these others are too numerous, have too many children.
They ask for bread and we give them contraceptives!
In future history books it will be said, and it will be a very ignoble entry, that just at the moment in our history when we, through our scientific and technical ingenuity, could produce virtually as much food as we wanted to, just when we were opening up and exploring the universe, we set up a great whimpering and wailing, and said there were too many people in the world. It's pitiful.
In response to the eugenic question, http://books.google.com/books?id=pV0eAQAAIAAJ&q=%22eugenic+question%22+overpopulation&dq=%22eugenic+question%22+overpopulation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=V1hcVN_dH4aoyAS-94LADQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBAWhat "What about overpopulation?" Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith (2005), Cecil Kuhne (Ed.), introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr., Ignatius Press, ISBN 1586170686 ISBN 9781586170684p. 227. http://books.google.com/books?id=vTFa4eHUw4UC&pg=PA227&dq=%22when+I+was+young,+people+used+to+say+the+poor+had+too+many+children%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NXRQVOjiDcqAygTX2YCYBA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22when%20I%20was%20young%2C%20people%20used%20to%20say%20the%20poor%20had%20too%20many%20children%22&f=false

„The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

Apologia pro vita sua (1968)
Kontext: The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.

„If you say to me that men are so made that the strongest kicks the weakest in the teeth and then the strongest survive“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

On the morality of applying eugenic Darwinism to the social order. Jesus Rediscovered (1969, 1979), ch. XVII. A Dialogue with Roy Trevivian, Doubleday, New York, p. 203. http://books.google.com/books?ei=xYd9VPDlHsaZNreOgYAC&id=yTwNAQAAMAAJ&dq=038514654X&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22kicks+the+weakest+in+the+teeth%22+ http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/mugridge/jred/jredcont.htm
Kontext: If you say to me that men are so made that the strongest kicks the weakest in the teeth and then the strongest survive, and go on to argue that if you apply this to economics you will get a happy society, you have done an irreparable wrong as we know, as we have seen.

„They ask for bread and we give them contraceptives!“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

In response to the eugenic question, http://books.google.com/books?id=pV0eAQAAIAAJ&q=%22eugenic+question%22+overpopulation&dq=%22eugenic+question%22+overpopulation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=V1hcVN_dH4aoyAS-94LADQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBAWhat "What about overpopulation?" Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith (2005), Cecil Kuhne (Ed.), introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr., Ignatius Press, p. 227. http://books.google.com/books?id=vTFa4eHUw4UC&pg=PA227&dq=%22when+I+was+young,+people+used+to+say+the+poor+had+too+many+children%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NXRQVOjiDcqAygTX2YCYBA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22when%20I%20was%20young%2C%20people%20used%20to%20say%20the%20poor%20had%20too%20many%20children%22&f=false
Kontext: You see, when I was young, people used to say the poor had too many children. Or, at the time of the famine in Ireland, they would say that the Irish had too many children. We were taking the food from Ireland, and the Irish were starving, and we said they were starving because they had too many children. Now we who are sated, who have to adopt the most extravagant and ridiculous devices to consume what we produce, while watching whole vast populations getting hungrier and hungrier, overcome our feelings of guilt by persuading ourselves that these others are too numerous, have too many children.
They ask for bread and we give them contraceptives!
In future history books it will be said, and it will be a very ignoble entry, that just at the moment in our history when we, through our scientific and technical ingenuity, could produce virtually as much food as we wanted to, just when we were opening up and exploring the universe, we set up a great whimpering and wailing, and said there were too many people in the world. It's pitiful.

„Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

Muggeridge Through the Microphone (1969)
Kontext: It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits — like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding — inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.

„Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„All new news is old news happening to new people“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„There is no such things as darkness, only a failure to see.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

„late news was suicide of Jan Masaryk - In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, [-] and saying in a loud voice -'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

Well, he has now.
Like It Was, p.255

„One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries — Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.“

—  Malcolm Muggeridge

"A Knight of the Woeful Countenance" in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167