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Malcolm Muggeridge

30 quotes

• “I realise that you don't want to know what is going on in Russia or let your readers know... I feel utterly disgusted... The hypocrisy of it all, the salesmanship, the Kinglsey-Martin-Bernard-Shaw-Sidney-and-Beatrice-Webb slop that frothed around that dark tyranny and famine made me sick.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian, William Percival Crozier, who had removed passages from Muggeridge's articles on the Soviet Union (22 and 23 March, 3 April 1933), quoted in Adam Sisman, A. J. P. Taylor:…

• “Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (1972)

• “[Have you ever visited the factory farms?] Well, I have seen them. I've seen the chicken ones, which are quite horrifying. And I have put my head in others. But the whole thing nauseates me more than I can tell you. To see meat produced in that way made it impossible for me to eat meat.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think that if men treat animals badly, they will almost certainly treat human beings badly in due course.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think that on the whole man would be living a more natural life if he were a vegetarian.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “At the 20th Congress of British Communist Party, Harry Pollitt, made [a] long report... Usual slogans spread about the building - 'Marxism is the science of working-class power'. Those present mostly lower middle class, few working class. On platform sat the Executive Committee, really deplorable faces. Unpleasant thought that in many parts of Europe, such people already in absolute power.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (1981), p. 247

• “Greene, we agreed, is a Jekyll and Hyde character, who has not succeeded in fusing the two sides of himself into any kind of harmony. There is conflict within him, and therefore he is liable to pursue conflict without.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (1981), p. 249

• “I doubt whether the Revolution has, in essentials, changed Russia at all. Reading Gogol, or Dostoevsky for that matter, one realizes how completely the Soviet regime has fallen back on to, and perhaps invigorated, the old Russia. Certainly there is much more of Gogol and Dostoievsky in the regime than there is of Marx.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (1981), p. 252

• “Late news was suicide of Jan Masaryk... In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, who never left his side when he was abroad, with him and and saying in a loud voice and looking sideways at Clementis - 'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.' Well, he has now.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (1981), p. 255

• “Freedom is a mystical truth — it's expressed best in The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter when the Grand Inquisitor confronted the returned Christ. The freedom that Christ gave the world was the freedom of being an individual, in a collectivity, of basing one's life on love, as distinct from power, of seeking the good of others rather than nourishing one's own ego. That was liberation. And the Chief Inquisitor, who speaks for every dictator, every millionaire, every ideologue that's ever been, says we can't have it. Go away. Stay away.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When a man is actually with God, and then sees what he has tried to do and in our terms done so marvellously. it amounts to something which is utterly inadequate. That's what I'm saying: that the steeple reaching up so far, far away, that Salisbury Cathedral has a beautiful steeple, but what is it compared with the sky into which it is reaching? It is in this comparison that one is aware of on the one hand the absurdity of our efforts, and on the other the inadequacy of them”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If I get to Heaven, which I very much doubt, I will ask of God just one thing, and that is to send Shakespeare back down to earth, and make him sit a University of Madras examination in Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of watching him failing the exam.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ancient and Modern: A Journey through the Twentieth Century, 1935-45 BBCTV

• “The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Apologia pro vita sua (1968)

• “The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realise, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chapter 1, Jesus Rediscovered (1969)

• “If you say to me that men are so made that the strongest kicks the weakest in the teeth and then the strongest survive, and go on to argue that if you apply this to economics you will get a happy society, you have done an irreparable wrong as we know, as we have seen.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the morality of applying eugenic Darwinism to the social order. Jesus Rediscovered (1969, 1979), ch. XVII. A Dialogue with Roy Trevivian, Doubleday, New York, p. 203.Richard Dawkins expressed a similar opinion of soc…

• “One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries — Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Knight of the Woeful Countenance" in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167

• “I hate government. I hate power. I think that man's existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From a video excerpt of a British TV interview of Muggeridge with Oswald Mosley, used by Adam Curtis in Part 3 of his 2007 BBC documentary series, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom.

• “There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness… is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ‘’the pursuit of happiness'’ is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On BBC's Woman's Hour (5 October 1965)

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

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge (1966)

• “There were soldiers everywhere... They were well fed and the civilian population was obviously starving. I mean starving in its absolute sense; not undernourished as, for instance, most Oriental peasants are undernourished and some unemployed workers in Europe, but having had for weeks next to nothing to eat. Later I found out that there had been no bread at all in the place for three months, and such for as there was I saw for myself in the market. The only edible thing on the lowest European standards was chicken -- about five chickens, fifteen roubles each. No one was buying. Where would a peasant get fifteen roubles? For the most part – the few that remain – are sold at the railway stations to passengers on their way to the mountains in the south for a holiday or for a rest cure in a sanatorium. The rest of the food offered for sale was revolting and would be thought unfit, in the ordinary way to be offered to animals. (...) "How are things with you?" I asked one man. He looked around anxiously to see no soldiers were about. "We have nothing, absolutely nothing. They have taken everything away," he said and hurried on. This is what I heard again and again and again. (...) It was true. They had nothing. It was also true that everything had been taken away. The famine is an organised one.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Soviet and the Peasantry: An Observer's Notes. I. Famine in the North Caucusus, in: The Manchester Guardian, 25 March 1933, pp. 13-14. By-line: "From a Correspondent in Russia" (i.e. Malcolm Muggeridge)

• “On the platform a group of peasants were standing in military formation five soldiers armed with rifles guarding them. There were men and women, each carrying a bundle. Somehow, lining them up in military formation made the thing grotesque—wretched looking peasants, half-starved, tattered clothes, frightened faces, standing to attention. These may be kulaks, I thought, but if so they have made a mighty poor thing of exploiting their fellows. I hung about looking on curiously, wanting to ask where they were to be sent—to the north to cut timber, somewhere else to dig canals—until one of the guards told me sharply to take myself off.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Soviet and the Peasantry: An Observer's Notes. II. Hunger in the Ukraine, in: The Manchester Guardian, 27 March 1933, p. 9. By-line: "From a Correspondent in Russia" (i.e. Malcolm Muggeridge)

• “All the evidence goes to show that the conditions in the Upper, Middle, and Lower Volga districts are as bad as in the North Caucasus and the Ukraine; in Western Siberia they are little, if at all, better. No one knows what supplies of grain the Government has at its disposal, but, as I have already pointed out, the food situation cannot improve before the summer and is likely to deteriorate. The spring sowing will be a critical time; all resources of the Government and of the Communist Party are to be used to make it a success. Already intensive propaganda is being carried on; and "political departments," manned chiefly by the military and members of the G.P.U., have been brought into existence in all parts of the country. These will be responsible for executing the Government's policy and, of course, vigorously carrying on the class war. Even so will it suffice? (...) In any case, it is certainly true that, unless the decay of agriculture that began when this collectivisation policy was first started and that has gone on at an increasing rate ever since is stopped, unless, that is to say, the Government is able to produce a better crop this year than last, there will be famine not merely in certain districts but throughout the country.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Soviet and the Peasantry: An Observer's Notes. III. Poor Harvest in Prospect", in: The Manchester Guardian, 28 March 1933, pp. 9-10. By-line: "From a Correspondent in Russia" (i.e. Malcolm Muggeridge)

• “A scene that has often come into my mind, both sleeping and waking — I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go onstage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learnt are not in this play at all, but belong to quite a different one. Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what should I do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way onto the stage, and then look for guidance to the prompter, whose head I can just see rising out of the floor-boards. Alas he only signals helplessly to me and I realise of course that his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begin to hiss and shout: “Get off the stage!”, “Let the play go on!”, “You’re interrupting!”. I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don’t fit. The only lines I know.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (1972)

• “I initially became a vegetarian for this reason: I have a great hatred for the treatment of animals in what we call factory farms. That, I felt, was one of the most horrible and bestial things, and I was constantly protesting about it. Then, when I protested, somebody would say to me, "Do you eat meat?" And if I said, "yes," then they would say, "Well, how do you know that that isn't made in this way?" And I realized that if I were to remain a meat-eater that I couldn't go on protesting. So that was the actual impulse. But since then I've come to feel that it does purify one, and I would find it very abhorrent to go back to eating meat. I've found that it has got a spiritual significance, but my initial motive was that—to be able to give a valid answer to that.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

• “I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God’s grace and Christ’s help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Originally in a sermon delivered at Queen's Cross church Aberdeen, Scotland (26 May 1968), later included in Jesus Rediscovered (1969)

• “It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits — like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding — inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Muggeridge Through the Microphone (1969)

• “We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy…One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn't rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant…I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media's prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Great Liberal Death Wish, lecture at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA, March 1979. Transcript in Imprimis, May 1979.

• “Against the new leviathan, whether in the guise of universal suffrage, democracy, or of an equally fraudulent triumphant proletariat, [Kierkegaard] pitted the individual human soul made in the image of a God who was concerned about the fate of every living creature. In contrast with the notion of salvation through power, he held out the hope of salvation through suffering. The Cross against the ballot box or the clenched fist; the solitary pilgrim against the slogan-shouting mob; the crucified Christ against the demagogue-dictators promising a kingdom of heaven on earth, whether achieved through endlessly expanding wealth and material well-being, or through the ever greater concentration of power and its ever more ruthless exercise.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Søren Kierkegaard, in: The Third Testament (2004)

• “You see, when I was young, people used to say the poor had too many children. Or, at the time of the famine in Ireland, they would say that the Irish had too many children. We were taking the food from Ireland, and the Irish were starving, and we said they were starving because they had too many children. Now we who are sated, who have to adopt the most extravagant and ridiculous devices to consume what we produce, while watching whole vast populations getting hungrier and hungrier, overcome our feelings of guilt by persuading ourselves that these others are too numerous, have too many children. (...) They ask for bread and we give them contraceptives! (...) In future history books it will be said, and it will be a very ignoble entry, that just at the moment in our history when we, through our scientific and technical ingenuity, could produce virtually as much food as we wanted to, just when we were opening up and exploring the universe, we set up a great whimpering and wailing, and said there were too many people in the world. It's pitiful.”

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source