20th Century Man

"It is difficult to resist the conclusion
that twentieth-century man has decided to abolish himself.

Tired of the struggle to be himself,
he has created boredom out of his own affluence,
impotence out of his own erotomania,
and vulnerability out of his own strength.

He himself blows the trumpet
that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down
until at last,
having educated himself into imbecility,
having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction,
he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus
and becomes extinct."


Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British journalist