Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Jacob BronowskiRead
The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The desire to inflict pain can corrupt the thoughts of otherwise ordinary individuals.
In this quote, Jacob Bronowski delves into the darker aspects of human nature, suggesting that the fleeting satisfaction derived from causing harm creates an opening for perverse influences to infiltrate the psyche of regular people. It serves as a cautionary reminder of how easily one may succumb to negative impulses when they allow themselves to entertain thoughts of harm or cruelty.
Themes
PainPerversionHuman NatureCrueltyInfluence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the consequences of bullying, one might say, 'As Jacob Bronowski wisely noted, the wish to hurt can lead us down a dark path.'
More from Jacob Bronowski
All quotes βThere is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.
Jacob BronowskiRead
To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and in every known society practices both together.
Jacob BronowskiRead
A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before.
Jacob BronowskiRead
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
Jacob BronowskiRead
The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.
Jacob BronowskiRead
Similar quotes
Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.
Eugenio MontaleRead
In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself.
AdyashantiRead
Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.
W. G. SebaldRead
You say I have the most wicked face of any woman. You say my hair is like the serpent locks of Medusa, that my eyes have the cruel cunning of Borgia, that my mouth is the mouth of the sinister scheming Delilah, that my hands are like the talons of a Circe or the blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory. And then you ask me of my soulβyou wish to know if it is reflected in my face.
Theda BaraRead
Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.
Sherwin B. NulandRead
There is no broader way to apostasy than to reject God's sovereignty in all things concerning the revelation of himself and our obedience.
John OwenRead