“Sadism is plainly connected with the need for self-assertion. At the same time it cannot be separated from the idea of defeat.”

—  Colin Wilson

A sadist is a man, who, in some sense, has his back to the wall. Nothing is further from sadism, for example, than the cheerful, optimistic mentality of a Shaw or Wells.
Source: The Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963), p. 158

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Colin Wilson192
author 1931–2013

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