“Evil is whatever distracts.”

— Franz Kafka

Source: book The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Last update Jan. 5, 2025. History

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Franz Kafka 266

author 1883–1924

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“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.”

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From Ben Moreell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Moreell, " Of Bread and Circuses http://fee.org/freeman/of-bread-and-circuses/", The Freeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freeman, January 1956, pp. 29–32 https://www.unz.org/Pub/Freeman-1956jan-00029. The quotation is from the left column of p. 31 in the original publication. Moreell's piece makes no mention of Cicero, but opens with a correct attribution of the phrase " Bread and circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses" to Juvenal.
Misattributed