SCREWTAPE'S TOAST
High quality, low quantity souls have greatly lessened.
Low quality, high quantity souls are abundant. They are not great to eat, but show hope and promise.
They were humans hardly worth damning, but worth saving to the Enemy.
The job of their Tempters was to first harden choices of the Hellward roads into a habit and steady repetition and then turn it into a principle the human is prepared to defend.
We want an abundance of captures because it is the triumph of skilled tempters.
This will continue: numerous catches that are trash. Change for the better!
Great sinners are made from the same material as great Saints, so less great sinners, less great Saints. The Enemy is frustrated.
The few great sinners have great followings. Catch the leader, his whole flock will follow.
Democracy as a corruption of human language.
Is democratic behavior the behavior that democracies like or the behavior that will preserve a democracy?
Word as selling power. Political ideal that men should be equally treated.
"I'm as good as you" is enthroned at the center of his life; it is a good, solid, resounding lie. He does not believe it himself.
The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. Resents inferiority. Envy of the superior.
Under the influence of democracy, those who are in any or every way inferior can labor successfully then ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level.
Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or handsomer than the mass. Cut down everyone to equals.
In educational system: dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious students. Hide individual differences.
A democracy does not want great men. Opposed to every sort of excellence.
The overthrow of free people and the multiplication of the slave state are for us a means, but the real end is the destruction of individuals.
Only individuals can be saved or damned.
The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighborhood of the Holy.
No where can we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.