8 Quotes by James Gilligan

The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps

All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.

It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a 'feeling,' for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness. [In Dante's Inferno] the lowest circle of hell was a region not of flames, but of ice---absolute coldness.

The first lesson that tragedy teaches (and that morality plays miss) is that all violence is an attempt to achieve justice, or what the violent person perceives as justice, for himself or for whomever it is on whose behalf he is being violent [...] Thus, the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo or prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence.

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo this ‘loss of face’ – no matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death.

The reason that I think it is a waste of time to engage in moral value judgements about people’s violence, is because it doesn’t advance by one iota our understanding of either the causes or the prevention of the violent behaviour.

The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps.

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.