Home > Work > Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality
1 " The Cartesian point of moral epistemology: I'm angry, therefore I'm right. "
― Theodore Dalrymple , Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality
2 " Political correctness is often the attempt to make sentimentality socially obligatory or legally enforceable. "
3 " I suspect, though I cannot prove, that in part this is the consequence of living in a world, including a mental world, so thoroughly saturated by the products of the media of mass communication. In such a world, what is done or happens in private is not done or has not happened at all, at least not in the fullest possible sense. "
4 " the only way to eliminate hypocrisy from human existence is to abandon all principles whatsoever; "
5 " Years later it is common for it to be thought that the possession of an opinion on a subject, which is active, is deemed more important than having any information on that subject, which is passive; and that the vehemence (feeling) with which an opinion is held is more important than the facts (knowledge) upon which it is based. "
6 " And once again sentimentality seems to be dialectically related to violence and brutality, in imagination if not in deed. "
7 " If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will be confused. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. Confucius’s "
8 " The family, with all its undoubted miseries (as well, of course, as joys) has long been the object of hate of ambitious intellectuals, for the family stands between the state, to be directed by intellectuals, and total power. "
9 " Some of the things written by romantic educational theorists are so ludicrous that it takes a complete absence of sense of humour not to laugh at them, and an almost wilful ignorance of what children, or at least many or most children, are like to believe them. Perhaps my favourite is from Cecil Grant’s English Education and Dr Montessori, published in 1913: No child learning to write should ever be told a letter is faulty… every stupid child or man is the product of discouragement… give Nature a free hand, and there would be nobody stupid. Clearly Mr Grant was much discouraged in his youth, but not nearly enough, I fear. "
10 " was Aristotle who said that a man who committed an offence while intoxicated was doubly guilty: first of the offence itself, and second of having intoxicated himself. "
11 " comes as a genuine shock to parents of children to whom nothing has been denied that they should turn out selfish, demanding and intolerant of the slightest frustration. "
12 " they become addicted to heroin with what can only be called determination, as others become aficionados of wine or postage stamps. "
13 " the throwing of tantrums must stand guarantor of life’s significance and meaning. "
14 " Easily able to capture the lion’s share of the aid that is given to their countries on the pretext that they are so poor, African elites have realised that there is wealth to be made from poverty. "
15 " the great majority of heroin addicts who end up in prison had extensive criminal records before they ever took heroin. "
16 " We should remember that there are few pleasures greater than promoting your moral enthusiasms at other people’s expense. "
17 " a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.’ Oscar Wilde "
18 " more likely that tattooing the name is a substitute for solicitude rather than evidence of it. "
19 " Only a man with a heart of stone could read of the death of Little Nell without laughing.’ Oscar Wilde "
20 " compassion being measured by the amount of other people’s money you are prepared to pay for the supposed resolution of a social problem. "
