“[The evildoer's] behavior has been threatening to those whose own morality is insecure; and as long as he is seen as having exemplified the tempting way of life, there are those who will need to punish him as a prophylaxis for their own temptations.”
Source: The Psychology of Personal Constructs, 1955, p. 407
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George Kelly (psychologist)20
American psychologist and therapist 1905–1967Related quotes
Hans Morgenthau book Politics Among Nations
Six Principles of Political Realism, § 5.
Politics Among Nations (1948)
Context: Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted — and few have been able to resist the power for long — to clothe their own aspirations and action in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.
Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer
XVIII. Why there are rejections of God, and that God is not injured.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 11 (p. 180)
Camille Paglia (1947) American writer
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8
Herbert Spencer book Social Statics
Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph
Social Statics (1851)
Context: Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life.
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.
K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera (1919–2006) Sri Lankan Buddhist monk
"Real Charity"
What Buddhists Believe (1993)
Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher
Rivers of Blood http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Rivers_of_Blood BBC2 documentary (8 March 2008)
James Burgh book Political Disquisitions
ch III: A Militia, with Navy
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Katherine Dunn book Geek Love
Geek Love (1989)