WIST Quotations

Lewis, C.S. -- The Screwtape Letters, Preface to the 1961 edition (1961)

Dave — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 16:13:13 +0000

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Preface to the 1961 edition (1961)
(Source)

Pratchett, Terry -- Post, alt.fan.pratchett (11 Jan 1997)

Dave — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 18:29:37 +0000

Oh dear, I’m feeling political today. It’s just that it’s dawned on me that “zero tolerance” only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Post, alt.fan.pratchett (11 Jan 1997)
(Source)

Jones, Mary Harris "Mother" -- Speech (1903), in The Autobiography of Mother Jones, ch. 10 (1925)

Dave — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 04:53:43 +0000

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1860-1930) American labor leader [a.k.a. Mother Jones]
Speech (1903), in The Autobiography of Mother Jones, ch. 10 (1925)