“Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.”
Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,—for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably...
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Oliver Wendell Holmes 135
Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894Related quotes
On "the war on terror", as quoted in Ann Coulter: The blonde assassin" in The Independent 16 August 2004) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ann-coulter-the-blonde-assassin-556813.html.
2004
20
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)
Introduction
The Wedge (1944)
Context: A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not?
The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn’t a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.
“It is less dangerous to treat most men badly than to treat them too well.”
Il n'est pas si dangereux de faire du mal à la plupart des hommes que de leur faire trop de bien.
Maxim 238.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“You got innocent men in jail, your insane asylums are filled.”
Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up