Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology.

To take upon oneself not punishment, but guilt - that alone would be godlike

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."