So Little Done Theodore Dalrymple Quotes & Sayings

If it was difficult for a visitor to find anything to eat impromptu in Moscow, Havana, Tirana, Bucharest, or Pyongyang, it took little effort to understand the connection of this difficulty with the vulgar anti-commercialism of Saint Karl and Saint Vladimir. Indeed, it would have taken all the ingenuity of the cleverest academics not to have understood it. — Theodore Dalrymple

The young man regained consciousness in the ambulance, but his mother insisted that he give no evidence to the police because, had he done so, her lover would have gone to jail: and she was most reluctant to give up a man who was, in his own words to the young man's 11-year-old sister, 'a better f - k than your father.' A little animal pleasure meant more to the mother than her son's life; and so he was confronted by the terrifying realisation that, in the words of Joseph Conrad, he was born alone, he lived alone, and would die alone. — Theodore Dalrymple

When you are harried, browbeaten, cajoled, bullied, pursued, threatened, bribed and surveyed by the state and its agencies, you have little inclination left over for obedience: least of all obedience to what one judge called the unenforceable. You have already paid your dues to society. Society can now look after itself. In the small sphere left to you, you will do exactly what you please, without regard to anyone else. — Theodore Dalrymple