Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca The YoungerRead
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote criticizes humanity's willingness to accept war as a form of madness while condemning individual acts of violence.
In this quote, Seneca The Younger highlights the irony of societal morality, pointing out the inconsistency in how we judge violence. While individuals are held accountable for murder and manslaughter, entire nations are often overlooked for the atrocities committed during war, suggesting that our moral compass is distorted when it comes to collective violence and destruction.
Themes
MadnessWarViolenceMoralitySociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of warfare during a debate.
More from Seneca The Younger
All quotes βNo tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
Seneca The YoungerRead
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Similar quotes
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. _x000D_ God is the ground, the substance, _x000D_ the teaching, the teacher, _x000D_ the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors.
Julian Of NorwichRead
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Many of the prophets of Jesus's time were thought to just be mad men, just sort of crazy people who were claiming to channel the divine. Perhaps that means we should be a little less judgmental of some of our own crazies talking about God on the corner. They might actually have found a pretty comfortable place in Jesus's time.
Reza AslanRead
It is my conviction that nothing enduring _x000D_ _x000D_ can be built on violence. _x000D_ _x000D_ The only safe way to overcome an enemy _x000D_ _x000D_ is to make of that enemy a friend.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.
Oliver GoldsmithRead
What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.
Meister EckhartRead