When a member of the British royal family revealed that she had adopted one of the slum fashions and had had her navel pierced, no one was in the least surprised. Where fashion in clothes, bodily adornment, and music are concerned, it is the underclass that increasingly sets the pace. Never before has there been so much downward cultural aspiration.

— Life at The Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple

The liberal assumption, in this as in most things, is that to understand is to approve (or at least to pardon), and therefore my disapproval indicated a lack of understanding.

— Life at The Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple

تَذَكَّرتُ لَيلى وَالسِنينَ الخَوالِيا
وَأَيّامَ لا نَخشى عَلى اللَهوِ ناهِيا

وَيَومٍ كَظِلِّ الرُمحِ قَصَّرتُ ظِلَّهُ
بِلَيلى فَلَهّاني وَما كُنتُ لاهِيا

— قيس بن الملوح

It is important to realize, however, that knowing that a given chemical (manufactured inside or outside the body) causes a given feeling to occur is not the same as knowing the mechanism for how this result is achieved. Knowing that a substance is working on certain systems, in certain circuits and receptors, and in certain neurons, does not explain why you feel happy or sad. It is only the beginning of an explanation.
reducing depression to a statement about the availability of serotonin or norepinephrine in general–a popular statement in the days and age of Prozac–is unacceptably rude.

— Descartes' Error

اي وعلي

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It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free.
On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security.
Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

— Life at The Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple

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He writes in a familiar controlled anger, sarcasm, and disappointment. And he writes eloquently.

حشرٌ مع الناس عيد

عود ببالي فكرة قناة ثانية
هي الأُولى رح تطير

على راسيي
ولو دتجيبلنا تهمة الماسونية

That the heart wants contradictory, incompatible things; that social conventions arose to resolve some of the conflicts of our own impulses; that eternal frustration is an inescapable concomitant of civilisation, as Freud had observed – all these recalcitrant truths fell beneath the notice of the proponents of sexual liberation, dooming their revolution to ultimate failure. The failure hit the underclass hardest. Not for a moment did the sexual liberators stop to consider the effects upon the poor of the destruction of the strong family ties that alone made emergence from poverty possible for large numbers of people.

— Life at The Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple