And secretly I fell prey to the one of the besetting sins of western intellectuals, which normally I abhor: I began to experience envy of suffering, that profoundly dishonest emotion which derives from the foolish notion that only the oppressed can achieve righteousness or - more importantly - write anything profound.
Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores Of Marx: Journeys In A Vanishing World
intellectuals, romanticism, stupidity