Daily Inspiration Quote by Malcolm Muggeridge

Muggeridge turns the standard anti-porn argument inside out and, in doing so, makes it harder to dismiss as mere moral panic. Instead of claiming pornography corrupts "society" - that vague, convenient abstraction - he points the indictment directly at himself. The line is a confession weaponized as evidence: if even a seasoned journalist, trained to observe and critique culture, can be pulled downward by it, then the danger is intimate, not theoretical.

The subtext is a rebuke to the era's growing faith in individual immunity. The permissive 1960s and 70s sold a fantasy that smart people can consume anything ironically, clinically, at a safe distance. Muggeridge refuses the pose. He suggests the mind isn't a sealed container; attention is a form of participation. What you repeatedly look at doesn't just pass through you - it recruits you.

There's also a sly rhetorical maneuver here: he sidesteps the unwinnable debate over definitions ("What counts as porn?") and contested social science ("Does it cause harm?") by relocating proof to the only territory he can claim with authority: his own appetite and its consequences. That move is both persuasive and provocative. Persuasive, because it reads as brutally honest; provocative, because it implies everyone else's denials are really just better PR.

Context matters. Muggeridge became a prominent public moralist later in life, especially after his Christian conversion, and he often framed modern media as a machine for flattening human dignity into consumption. This line distills that worldview into a single, sharp admission: the corruption isn't out there; it's the part of you that says yes.