#indignation

Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. ↗

— Paul Johnson

#indignation #men

Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior. ↗

— Thucydides

#cheated #compelled #equal #excited #first

A man's sentiments are generally just and right, while it is second selfish thought which makes him trim and adopt some other view. The best reforms are worked out when sentiment operates, as it does in women, with the indignation of righteousness. ↗

— Leland Stanford

#best #does #generally #him #indignation

I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lite, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#falsity-of-the-american-dream #hard-work #indignation-of-the-poor #lies #victim-blaming

A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression. ↗

— Mo Yan

#dark #dark side #express #expression #human

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny. ↗

— William Godwin

#indignation #itself #pregnant #revolution #tyranny

Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation. ↗

— Angelina Grimke

#christian #demoralizing #die #exert #exerted

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#halo #indignation #moral

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#compassion #friendship #indignation #life #long

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. ↗

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

#into #person #pours #puritan #righteous