“Punishment is now unfashionable… because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.”
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Thomas Szasz 70
Hungarian psychiatrist 1920–2012Related quotes
“there is no collective guilt,… guilt is individual, like salvation." [p.28]”
Source: The Odessa File
infinity plus interview (2001)
Context: Historical processes have never much interested me, but history is full of stories, full of triumph and tragedy and battles won and lost. It is the people who speak to me, the men and women who once lived and loved and dreamed and grieved, just as we do. Though some may have had crowns on their heads or blood on their hands, in the end they were not so different from you and me, and therein lies their fascination. I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable "heroic" school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible.
“We are living even now among punishments and ruins.”
"A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey".
What Are People For? (1990)
Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 11 (p. 106)
Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
