“Of the four terms ... Praise, Blame, Punishment, and Responsibility, the cardinal and governing one is the last.”

“On Preparing to Read Kipling”, p. 135
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

The Second Sex (1949)
Context: It is vain to apportion praise and blame. The truth is that if the vicious circle is so hard to break, it is because the two sexes are each the victim at once of the other and of itself. Between two adversaries confronting each other in their pure liberty, an agreement could be easily reached: the more so as the war profits neither. But the complexity of the whole affair derives from the fact that each camp is giving aid and comfort to the enemy; woman is pursuing a dream of submission, man a dream of identification. Want of authenticity does not pay: each blames the other for the unhappiness he or she has incurred in yielding to the temptations of the easy way; what man and woman loathe in each other is the shattering frustration of each one's own bad faith and baseness.

Source: Jacob's Room

1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Context: Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.

"From a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Newton", line 21. (1782).

As quoted in The Historians' History of the World (1904) by Henry Smith Williams, p. 423
As quoted in The Affairs of Women: A Modern Miscellany (2006) by Colin Bingham, p. 367
Variant: I praise loudly. I blame softly.

As reported by David Ashley (1995) and quoted in Brother Number One (1999) by David P. Chandler
Attributed

Richard Nixon: A Fantasy by David Frye (1973)