A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that challenges often force us to make difficult choices, sacrificing something valuable for the greater good.
C. S. Lewis uses the metaphor of chess to illustrate how challenges in life can resemble a strategic game, where difficult decisions often arise. Just as a chess player might sacrifice a bishop to protect the king, individuals might face situations where they need to give up something important in order to safeguard their overall well-being or values. This quote encourages reflection on the complexity of choices in moral dilemmas and the sacrifices that may be necessary for greater preservation.
Themes
ChessSacrificeStrategyChoicesChallengesMorality
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about ethical dilemmas in business, one might quote Lewis to emphasize the importance of making tough choices.
More from C. S. Lewis
All quotes βI enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
C. S. LewisRead
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. LewisRead
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
C. S. LewisRead
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
C. S. LewisRead
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
C. S. LewisRead
Similar quotes
Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
James Russell LowellRead
Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
Viktor E. FranklRead
Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left...They were everything. Everything was there, in them...Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.
Toni MorrisonRead
However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.
Emil CioranRead
Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiRead
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Arthur C. ClarkeRead