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In confessing a reprehensible act, I would sometimes add a still more reprehensible interpretation—and whereas I might forget my own judgments upon myself, those in whom I had confided would carefully store them against me.

— Kenneth Burke

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More quotes by Kenneth Burke

You moralistic dog—admitting a hierarchy in which you are subordinate, purely that you may have subordinates; licking the boots of a superior, that you may have yours in turn licked by an underling.

When finding that people held the same views as I, I persuaded myself that I held them differently.

God pity the man or the nation wise in proverbs, I told myself, for there is much misery and much error gone into the collecting of such a store.

We would not deny the mind; but merely remember that as the corrective of wrong thinking is right thinking, the corrective of all thinking is the body.

As for bravery: dead on the fields are millions who would have feared to wear a hat in inappropriate season, so I judged that brave warriors are dirt cheap as compared with untimid civilians.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kenneth Burke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.