Quote

Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?

C. S. Lewis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

C. S. Lewis
Age: 64 †
Born: 1898
Born: January 1
Died: 1963
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Broadcaster
Essayist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Belfast
Ireland
Clive Hamilton
N. W. Clerk
CS Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Hurt
Governed
Whether
Governments
Tell
Classic
Government
Doctrine
Wells
Teeth
Cobblers
Well
Endure
Dentists
Would
Shoes
Aching
Allow
Dentist

More quotes by C. S. Lewis

Image
The real moon,if you could reach it and survive it, would in a deep and deadly sense be just like anywhere else...no man would find an abiding strangness on the moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden.
C. S. Lewis
Image
I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated
C. S. Lewis
Image
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Most people spend most of their lives doing neither what they want to be doing nor what they ought to be doing.
C. S. Lewis
Image
I have discovered that the people who believe most strongly in the next life do the most good in the present one.
C. S. Lewis
Image
[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop.
C. S. Lewis
Image
As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.
C. S. Lewis
Image
If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should we not look forward to the arrival?
C. S. Lewis
Image
I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.
C. S. Lewis
Image
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.
C. S. Lewis
Image
The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is oneself. And yet one can't change that either-only ask Our Lord to do so.
C. S. Lewis
Image
People shouldn't call for demons unless they really mean what they say.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.
C. S. Lewis
Image
Friends are seldom found they are made.
C. S. Lewis
Image
I cannot understand how a man can appear in print claiming to disbelieve everything that he presupposes when he puts on the surplice. I feel it is a form of prostitution.
C. S. Lewis
Image
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
C. S. Lewis