Malcolm Muggeridge's Quotes

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.

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

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

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.

History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

The trouble with kingdoms of heaven on earth is that they're liable to come to pass, and then their fraudulence is apparent for all to see. We need a kingdom of heaven in Heaven, if only because it can't be realized.

Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.

One of the many pleasures of old age is giving things up.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel.

The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.

He was not only a bore; he bored for England.

My opinion, my conviction, gains immensely in strength and sureness the minute a second mind as adopted it.

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.

Travel, of course, narrows the mind.

It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.