Khari’s Reviews > The Screwtape Letters > Status Update

"Since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another."

"To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge-to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior-this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded."

Wow, this has become even truer. How many times have you heard an author completely dismissed because they are an old dead white man?

"Anything, even a sin, which has the effect of moving him close up to the Enemy, makes against us in the long run."

"When...distraction crosses his mind you ought to encourage him to thrust it away by sheer will power and to try to continue the normal prayer as if nothing had happened; once he accepts the distraction as his present problem and lays that before the Enemy and makes it the main theme of his prayers and his endeavors, then, so far from doing good, you have done harm."

"Above all, don't let the young fools notice...If they notice...they will be on the road to discovering that 'love' is not enough, that charity is needed and not yet achieved and that no external law can supply its place."

""A sensible human once said 'If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit;' and again, 'She's the sort of woman who lives for others-you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.'""


--Accidentally put this into the autobiography of mark twain, sorry, it's actually from here.

"In discussing joint action, it becomes obligatory that A should argue in favor of B's supposed wishes and against his own, while B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party's real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbors a secrete claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown ..."

"A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...Thus while the woman thanks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish."

"Once they know that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and others again indifferent. WE have largely removed this knowledge. For the descriptive adjective 'unchanged' we have substituted the emotional adjective 'stagnant.' "

..."And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on."