Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote warns against blind faith and the dangers of believing in anything without discernment.
Malcolm Muggeridge highlights a significant problem of the twentieth century: credulity, or the tendency to be too trusting without sufficient skepticism. He suggests that after losing faith in God, instead of embracing skepticism, people become vulnerable to believing in any ideology or falsehood that comes their way, which can lead to a misguided life based on unfounded beliefs.
Themes
CredulityBeliefFaithSkepticismTruth
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the importance of critical thinking, one might quote Muggeridge to emphasize the need for skepticism.
More from Malcolm Muggeridge
All quotes →This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
I never met a rich man who was happy, but I have only very occasionally met a poor man who did not want to become a rich man.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
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.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
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it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
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