"Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator"
About this Quote
Lewis is doing something more corrosive than mere pessimism: he’s trying to strip moral language of its comforting innocence. The line lands like a disinfectant on a cherished slogan. By insisting that “almost anything” admirable has been pressed into “some disgusting use,” he refuses the reader the easy refuge of pure principles. The target isn’t belief itself, but the rhetorical habit of treating belief as self-justifying.
The phrasing is engineered for contamination. “Immaculate” borrows the aura of religious purity, then “compromising manipulator” drags it through the mud of politics, commerce, and ego. That pivot is the point: ideals don’t fall on their own; they’re made useful by operators who understand that sanctity is persuasive currency. Lewis is warning that praise is a technology. Once a principle becomes speakable as virtue, it becomes rentable as cover.
Context matters. Lewis wrote in a Europe where modern mass persuasion was rapidly professionalizing and where high-minded causes were routinely drafted into brutal projects. The early 20th century didn’t just produce new ideologies; it produced new machines for selling them. His modernist sensibility is allergic to moral kitsch, and this sentence reads like an antidote to poster-ready uplift.
The subtext isn’t “abandon principles.” It’s “stop confusing a clean idea with clean hands.” If you want ethics that survive contact with history, Lewis suggests, you have to build in suspicion: ask who benefits, who speaks, who gets absolved. Principles aren’t invalidated by misuse, but they are permanently vulnerable to it.
The phrasing is engineered for contamination. “Immaculate” borrows the aura of religious purity, then “compromising manipulator” drags it through the mud of politics, commerce, and ego. That pivot is the point: ideals don’t fall on their own; they’re made useful by operators who understand that sanctity is persuasive currency. Lewis is warning that praise is a technology. Once a principle becomes speakable as virtue, it becomes rentable as cover.
Context matters. Lewis wrote in a Europe where modern mass persuasion was rapidly professionalizing and where high-minded causes were routinely drafted into brutal projects. The early 20th century didn’t just produce new ideologies; it produced new machines for selling them. His modernist sensibility is allergic to moral kitsch, and this sentence reads like an antidote to poster-ready uplift.
The subtext isn’t “abandon principles.” It’s “stop confusing a clean idea with clean hands.” If you want ethics that survive contact with history, Lewis suggests, you have to build in suspicion: ask who benefits, who speaks, who gets absolved. Principles aren’t invalidated by misuse, but they are permanently vulnerable to it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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