And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on. And great work has already been done. Once they knew that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and others again indifferent. We have largely removed this knowledge. For the descriptive adjective ‘unchanged’ we have substituted the emotional adjective ‘stagnant’. We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain-not as something which everyone reaches at the of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
(the “they” are humans, the “we” are demons)
One of my favorite parts of this book.
(Source: zekezeekzeke)
Notes:
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haimitzi reblogged this from zekezeekzeke and added:
One of my favorite parts of this book.
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