On Speech

July 21, 2025

Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him.

Hence, from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: “I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.”

Once this habit is well established, you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.

~ C.S Lewis, Screwtape Letters