- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
WIST currently holds 19,787 quotations by 3,081 authors. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Aristotle • Asimov, Isaac • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Homer • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Martial • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Sophocles • Tolkien, J.R.R. • Twain, Mark • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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action age America beauty belief change character courage death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history human nature humanity integrity leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
Popular Quotables
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- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,970)
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- More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius on The Problems of Philosophy, ch. 2 “The Existence of Matter” (1912)
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- More quotes by Bullock, Christopher on Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 Nov 1789)
- More quotes by Aristotle on The Iliad [Ἰλιάς], Book 9, l. 63ff (9.63-64) [Nestor] (c. 750 BC) [tr. Pope (1715-20)]
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Quotations by Gilligan, James
All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted by Jon Ronson in "Jon Ronson: By the Book," New York Times (9 Apr 2015). When asked what one book he would require a US President to read, he named Gilligan's Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, and then, having said he's talked with Gilligan, Ronson gives the quotation above, and this is the form it's usually given, often then cited to the book.
In the actual book, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, ch. 5 (1997), Gilligan has:
The different forms of violence, whether toward individuals or entire populations, are motivated (caused) by the feeling of shame. The purpose of violence is to diminish the intensity of shame and replace it as far as possible with its opposite, pride, thus preventing the individual from being overwhelmed by the feeling of shame. Violence toward others, such as homicide, is an attempt to replace shame with pride.
Once we have labeled someone as “evil” there is often no limit to the cruelty and violence we can feel justified in administering to him ….
What is at issue here is relative poverty, not absolute poverty. Inferiority is a relative concept. When everyone is poor together, there is no shame in being poor. As Marx said, it is not living in a hovel that causes people to feel ashamed, it is living in a hovel next to a palace. And as he also said, shame is the emotion of revolution, i.e. of violence. But one does not have to be a Marxist, or subscribe to everything he said (and I do not), in order to see how correct his insight was.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence, ch. 5 (2001)
(Source)
In short, the contradiction in the old defense of class stratification is that it defends leisure for the leisure class, but not for the underclass. With reference to the underclass, leisure is said to destroy the incentive to work, leads to slothfulness and self-indulgence, and retards cognitive and moral development. When applied to the leisure class, the concept evokes an image of Plato and Aristotle, whose leisure was based on slave labor, creating the intellectual foundations of Western civilization; or patrician slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson laying the foundations of American civilization; or creative aristocrats like Count Leo Tolstoy or Bertrand, Earl Russell; or, even closer to home, of our own sons and daughters (or of ourselves, when we were young adults) being freed from the stultifying tasks of earning a living until well into our adult years so that we could study in expensive universities to gain specialized knowledge and skills.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence, ch. 5 (2001)
(Source)
We cannot learn what causes violence and how we could prevent it as long as we are thinking in the traditional moral and legal terms. The only questions that this way of thinking can ask take the form: “How evil (or heroic) was this particular act of violence, and how much punishment (or reward) does the person who did it deserve?” But even if it were possible to gain the knowledge that would be necessary to answer those questions (which it is not), answers would still not help us in the least to understand what causes violence or how we could prevent it — these are empirical not moral questions.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence, Introduction (2001)
(Source)
The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid that they are wimps.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, ch. 3 (1997)
(Source)
I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Interview in Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, ch. 13 (2015)
(Source)
