Looking for a C.S. Lewis quote

[Newsy]

I am in need of a little help. I have been looking for a certain quote from C.S. Lewis and have had no success. I can only paraphrase this quote, I keep making it easier don’t I? It goes something like, “We must all agree that those who base their theology on attacking others, are in a bad state indeed”. I have searched everywhere and cannot find anything close. It seems to me that someone here has this as their signature.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Newsy

 

[GKC]

I am in need of a little help. I have been looking for a certain quote from C.S. Lewis and have had no success. I can only paraphrase this quote, I keep making it easier don’t I? It goes something like, “We must all agree that those who base their theology on attacking others, are in a bad state indeed”. I have searched everywhere and cannot find anything close. It seems to me that someone here has this as their signature.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Newsy

I’ve collected Lewis for 45 years, and am pretty good at sourcing quotes. But no idea on this one.

I’ll keep looking around and watching for an answer here.

GKC

 

[FidesSpesCarita]

I’ve collected Lewis for 45 years, and am pretty good at sourcing quotes. But no idea on this one.

I’ll keep looking around and watching for an answer here.

GKC

I am no help to the OP, but I find it a great irony that GKC is a C.S. Lewis collector. Although GKC was known to be a prolific reader so it would make sense in a way I suppose.

 

[GKC]

I am no help to the OP, but I find it a great irony that GKC is a C.S. Lewis collector. Although GKC was known to be a prolific reader so it would make sense in a way I suppose.

I’m a Chesterton collector, too. Also Belloc, Sayers, Williams, Lunn and Tolkien. And a prolific book collector in many other areas. It’s pathological.

it’s unlikely Chesterton ever heard of Lewis, but Lewis certainly knew of Chesterton.

GKC

 

[Mary_of_Bethany]

I am in need of a little help. I have been looking for a certain quote from C.S. Lewis and have had no success. I can only paraphrase this quote, I keep making it easier don’t I? It goes something like, “We must all agree that those who base their theology on attacking others, are in a bad state indeed”. I have searched everywhere and cannot find anything close. It seems to me that someone here has this as their signature.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Newsy

Hi, Newsy. For the past week, I have been looking at web sites that compile quotes from famous authors in an attempt to search for your C. S. Lewis quote. I was unable to find any quotes that had the words you included, but I did find something that, at least in my opinion, seemed to convey the gist of what you wrote. It is as follows:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

The above quote is from the essay titled “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics by C. S. Lewis.

Could that be what you are looking for, or at least is it something like that? If that is not the right one, I’ll keep looking….

 

[larsenl1]

I found this that seemed to capture the essence of what you are looking for.

“When you resort to attacking the messenger and not the message, you have lost the debate.”

Addison Whithecomb quote

I looked at CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and GK Chesterton quotes and found nothing that seemed to be like the quote you remember.

 

[larsenl1]

Then there is this

“I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one’s eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people’s eyes can see further than mine.”
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

The only way this lines up with your quote is kind of like ‘we must all agree’

 

[Newsy]

I found this that seemed to capture the essence of what you are looking for.

“When you resort to attacking the messenger and not the message, you have lost the debate.”

Addison Whithecomb quote.

Its not what I was looking for, but I like it just as well! I’m going to use this one.
Thanks everybody for your help.
I always appreciate the resource of CAF!