Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong.
Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky; really Friedrich Nietzsche
Misattributed Someone else said or wrote it.Draft entry, not yet reviewed
Where it really comes from
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, 'On the Tarantulas' (1883): 'Mißtraut Allen, in welchen der Trieb zu strafen mächtig ist!' In Thomas Common's translation (1909): 'distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!' Zarathustra is warning against the 'preachers of equality', whose talk of justice he calls revenge. Searches of the Dostoevsky sources for the thought, in English and Russian, find nothing. No source has been found for the Goethe attribution either.
Where it circulates
Shared online under Dostoevsky's name, and sometimes under Goethe's, without a source. It is Nietzsche's, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
What it says
Beware of people who are eager to punish: a strong urge to punish betrays resentment dressed up as justice.
Forms in circulation
- translation
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
Thomas Common's translation of Nietzsche, the genuine source. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, tr. Thomas Common (1909), Part II, ch. XXIX 'The Tarantulas'; https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1998)
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Nearby
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Checked against
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