Quotes About Guilt

The secret of the Witch Doctor's power lies in the fact that man needs an integrated view of life, a philosophy, whether he is aware of his need or not—and whenever, through ignorance, cowardice or mental sloth, men choose not to be aware of it, their chronic sense of guilt, uncertainty and terror makes them feel that the Witch Doctor's philosophy is true.

If there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it's evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it —we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel he's worth it. He won't fight. But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He's the man who'll beat us.

People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking.

You're unbearably conceited, was one of the two sentences she heard throughout her childhood, even though she never spoke of her own ability. The other sentence was: You're selfish. She asked what was meant, but never received an answer. She looked at the adults, wondering how they could imagine that she would feel guilt from an undefined accusation.

I, who do not accept the unearned, neither in values nor in guilt

What was happening to him?—he wondered. The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right—wasn't it the basic formula of moral corruption? To recognize one's guilt, yet feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference.

Vosotros, que carecéis de normas de estima propia, aceptáis la culpa y no os atrevéis a formular preguntas.

The power of ideas has no reality for either of them, and neither cares to learn that the proof of that power lies in his own chronic sense of guilt and terror.

Si nos preguntamos cuáles son las razones que subyacen en la fea mezcla de cinismo y culpa en la que pasa su vida la mayoría de los hombres, diremos que son estas: cinismo, porque ni practican ni aceptan la moralidad altruista; culpa, porque no se atreven a rechazarla.

Verá, doctor Stadler; a la gente no le gusta pensar, y cuanto mayores son sus conflictos, menos piensa. Pero gracias a cierto instinto, sabe que ha de hacerlo y ello produce una sensación de culpabilidad. Por tal motivo, bendecirá y seguirá a quienquiera que le ofrezca una justificación para no pensar. Alguien que convierta en virtud de gran altura intelectual lo que saben que es su pecado, su debilidad y su miseria.

Temes al hombre que tiene un dólar menos que tú, porque ese dólar es suyo por derecho y él te hace sentir como un estafador moral. Odias al hombre que tiene un dólar más que tú, porque ese dólar es tuyo por derecho y te hace sentir moralmente estafado. El hombre que está por debajo es la fuente de tu culpa; el hombre que está por arriba es la fuente de tu frustración.

that is the psychology of a murderer who's committed the perfect crime and then confesses because he can't bear the idea that nobody knows it's a perfect crime.

ideário dos saqueadores fez com que pessoas como o senhor passassem a encarar suas maiores realizações como um estigma vergonhoso, sua prosperidade como culpa, seus maiores filhos, os industriais, como vilões

If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.

The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism—and if they perish, they will perish together. The tragic irony will be that they will have destroyed each other; and the major share of the guilt will belong to the intellectual.

She looked at the adults, wondering how they could imagine that she would feel guilt from an undefined accusation.

We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.

That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth.

A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.

I find myself thinking that somewhere down the line both guilt and empathy speak to our own buried sense that an order of some sort is required, not the social order that exists, necessarily, but something more fundamental and more demanding; a sense, further, that one has a stake in this order, a wish that, no matter how fluid this order sometimes appears, it will not drain out of the universe.

I wanted to be neither a supplicant, always on the periphery of power and seeking favor from liberal benefactors, nor a permanent protester, full of righteous anger as we waited for white America to expiate its guilt. Both paths were well trodden; both, at some fundamental level, were born of despair. No, the point was to win.

the lonely look down upon the hungry; the hungry look down upon the starving. The guilty blame the damaged. Those of doubtful righteousness speak of cannibals, the unquestionably vile, the sinners and the damned. It makes everyone feel much better.

Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow.

If his guilt made him a tyrant before men, it made him like a child before his God. Not a helpless or pleading child, but a petulant one, the type of tough boy who's known too little love and is quick to blame others for his mistakes.