Fewtril no.282

Religion is the rule-governed search for that which one lacks. Reason, therefore, stands as the religion of the moderns.

Fewtril #148

We ought to consider that some ideals become outmoded, not because society has progressed beyond them, but because so few men are able to live up to them.

Fewtril #180

There is a luxuriantly principled kind of thoughtlessness whereby one can decry things in the lowest terms without caring to find out whether they are the consequences of the very things that one extols in the highest.

Fewtril #202

The sight of people competing to be victims seems to be odd and against the order of things until one considers that they are in fact competing to be victors.

Fewtril #158

It is in turns both amusing and distressing to observe members of an audience concede with an almost unanimous quiescence as some politician tells them for the umpteenth time that they – as blessed habitants in this particular time and of this particular soil – are the most diverse and dynamic creatures ever to have been ennobled under the title Homo sapiens.

Fewtril no.274

There has been raised a horde of men, if so honorific a title may still be retained for them, who cry out “sky-fairy!” whenever they hear the word “God”, rather as Ivan Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever they heard bells and whistles, albeit with a crucial difference: the dogs could not be inculcated to fancy that in their mindless reflexes they were on the side of reason.

Fewtril #170

The word “God” holds more power now than it has held in many past ages — sometimes its mere utterance is enough to clear a room.

Fewtril #176

There is so little trust amongst people nowadays that in despair we might exaggerate how little there is, which may have the consequence of fulfilling the degree of distrust stated in the former exaggeration.

Fewtril no.240

Many call it the exercise of the intellect; but in ear-shot and sight of all their high-flown talk, of their verbosity that goes nowhere, of their ceaseless rearrangement of things, of their profound alienation and insecurity, even of their self-loathing that becomes at times a shameless self-regarding that is yet never so penetrating as to reveal to them how much they regard themselves — looking at it all, one might find for it another name: madness.

Fewtril #189

It is good to remind people every now and then that geniuses are not like rabbits: they do not breed nearly so prolifically, nor can they be pulled out of hats.

Fewtril no.264

Scepticism is an important tool in the journalist’s toolbox. It looks fine and well-kept next to the space where the ratchet of public expectation occasionally rests.

Fewtril no.270

The bellwether-intelligentsia are always one step ahead of the herd in the run of ideas, but are usually outpaced and trampled down in the realisation of their consequences.

Fewtril #169

Power to the people does not translate into freedom for the person; and one is, after all, a person and not a people. How is it that anyone forgets this? — Because he becomes part of the mass, wherein he loses himself.

Fewtril #221

It is perverse that the leaders of a modern nation feel they must honour the memory of the great men to whom that nation owes what it possesses in high culture and civility, and yet, were those great men alive today, they would be reviled for holding opinions that those leaders profess to find uncultured and uncivilised and unfit for the standing of a modern nation.

Fewtril no.261

It may be banal or even simple-minded to say so, but I must confess that I am often in awe of the wondrous possibilities and effects of language, such as that some new combinations of words can easily, and with little mental effort, lead to new and quite remarkable ideas. For instance, when the word “public”, referring to the people at large, is inserted into the phrase “informed debate”, referring to reliable and learned discussion, at once there is born a new and more complex phrase, out of which grows a new and more complex idea, which itself quite simply and wonderfully corresponds to nothing in the known universe.

Fewtril #157

Of the misfortunes that he feels must come, Man prefers a certain regularity to an uncertain frequency and magnitude. Nothing shows this more clearly than that since the earliest times he has preferred to be taxed rather than robbed.

Fewtril #159

As a prescription against Emerson’s admirably idealistic notion that all human beings should be regarded as divine, I suggest you take a brisk stroll through an English city on a Friday night. If it doesn’t cure you, it will at least exercise your imagination.

Fewtril no.247

It is a happy requital for those who play their part in dispelling the idea of human importance that they have the human propensity to feel important in doing so.

Fewtril no.246

The popular success of liberalism is owed perhaps to its securing the right of every man to be indifferent and shamelessly vulgar — such of whom it has had the good sense of flattery to call tolerant and free.

Fewtril no.262

Falsification can begin anywhere, but it must begin if “explanation” continues where a fundament is reached.