M. Scott Peck

Morgan Scott Peck (22 May, 1936 – 25 September, 2005) was was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who was most well known for writing the book The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978. He wrote fifteen books in total.

Quotes

The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (1978)

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (New York: Simon & Schuster / Touchstone, 1998 ed. [orig. 1978])

• Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.
  • p. 51

• Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
  • Part I – Discipline

• Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved.
  • p. 140

• By masochism I do not mean that they (masochists) get their sexual jollies out of physical pain, but simply that in some strange way they are chronically self-destructive.
  Masochists are people who perpetually attempt to destroy themselves. They are always, in one way or another, trying to kill themselves. In the long run they almost always succeed. Our task in therapy is to help them empty themselves of their masochism so that life may fill them instead.
  The problem of masochism is intimately tied up with the problem of responsibility. Masochists are people who, because they hate themselves, believe that they are worthless and deserve only punishment. They are self-destructive because they lack the capacity to assume responsibility for their own lives. Instead of taking care of themselves, they neglect themselves, abuse themselves, and in the end destroy themselves.
  The genuinely disciplined person, on the other hand, is one who takes responsibility for his or her own life and well-being. Discipline is self-caring. Masochism is not. Discipline is love translated into action; masochism is love turned against the self.
  • Part I – “Discipline,” pp. 61-63

• Laymen tend to associate sadism and masochism with purely sexual activity, thinking of them as the sexual enjoyment derived from inflicting or receiving physical pain. Actually, true sexual sadomasochism is a relatively uncommon form of psychopathology. Much, much more common, and ultimately more serious, is the phenomenon of social sadomasochism, in which people unconsciously desire to hurt and be hurt by each other through their nonsexual interpersonal relations.
  • Part II - Love

• Most people who seek psychotherapy are suffering from a sense of personal inadequacy. Yet there are always a few whose problem is just the opposite: they suffer because they cannot accept their greatness. Perhaps ten percent of my patients have had to come to terms not with their inferiority but with their superiority. To accept one's legitimate talents without guilt or fear is as much a responsibility as to accept one's faults.
  • pp. 63-66

• It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.
  • Part I – Discipline

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983)

M. Scott Peck (1983). People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684848594. 

• There are a number of different theological models of evil ... This book will concern itself solely with the subject of human evil, and its primary focus will be on 'bad people'.
  • Page 7.
    

• Dangerous though a psychology of evil might be, it will be more dangerous not to have one.
  • Page 303.

• At the other end of the human spectrum from the saints lie the least free, the evil. All one can see of them is the mud. And it all looks the same. In Chapter 3 I offered a clinical, nosological description of the evil personality. It is extraordinary how well the evil fit the mould. Once you’ve seen one evil person, you’ve essentially seen them all. Even psychotics, whom we are accustomed to thinking of as the most seriously deranged, are more interesting. (Indeed, there is some reason to suspect that in certain cases psychosis is chosen as a preferable alternative to evil.)
  Then how is it that psychiatrists have until now failed to recognize such a distinct, rigid type? It is because they have brought the pretence of respectability. They have been deceived by what Harvey M. Cleckley called ‘the mask of sanity.’ As my priest friend commented, evil is ‘the ultimate disease.’ Despite their pretence of sanity, the evil are the most insane of all.
  It is to the incredibly dreary insanity of the Adolf Eichmanns of this world that Hannah Arendt was referring when she spoke of ‘the banality of evil.’ Thomas Merton put it this way:
  "One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane."
  • Page 304 (UK edition).

• It would, I believe, be quite appropriate to classify evil people as constituting a specific variant of the narcisstic personality disorder.
  • Page 105.

• The time is right, I believe, for psychiatry to recognize a distinct new type of personality disorder to encompass those I have named evil. In addition to the abrogation of responsibility that characterizes all personality disorders, this one would specifically be distinguished by:
  (a) consistent destructive, scapegoating behaviour, which may often be quite subtle.
  (b) excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
  (c) pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of life-style but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
  d) intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophreniclike disturbance of thinking at times of stress.
  • Page 146, UK edition.

• This is a dangerous book.
  • Page 1.

• Who in the hell is Satan? I don't know.
  • Page 225.

• The spirit of evil is one of unreality, but it itself is real. To think otherwise is to be misled.
  • Page 208.

• If we attempt te deal with (human) evil by destroying it, we will also end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physcially. And we are likely to take some innocent people with us as well.
  • Page 306.

• Evil can be thought of as the exercise of political power — that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion in order to avoid extending oneself for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth.
  • p. 89

• Among the reasons that the Oedipus complex is so important in psychiatry is that adults who have failed to resolve it usually have great difficulty in accomplishing many of the renunciations required for successful adult adjustments. They still have not learned that they cannot have their cake and eat it too.
  • Page 176 (UK edition).

• I have come to suspect that many cases of schizophrenia may in fact be the result of evil being passed from parents to children ... it is possible that some children, faced with the choice of either becoming evil themselves or utterly losing their minds, choose the latter.
  Evil is contagious. The children of the evil are often damaged for life.
  • pp. 127-128

• My favorite definition of evil is that it is militant ignorance.
  • p. 178

• Evil is that force ... residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.
  • Page.

• It is not the weak or the stupid who are most likely to be the targets of evil, but the strong and the good. Evil seeks to destroy the life force wherever it is most manifest.
  • p. 194

• It has often seemed to me that those who are most dedicated to the light are the ones most subject to assault by the forces of darkness. Evil always hates the light. And yet these attacks are not necessarily destructive. In the long run they may serve the purposes of grace. For through them the servants of the light may become more firmly committed to their cause, their dedication tested and refined.
  • p. 212

• While Eastern religions have a far more developed understanding of spiritual growth, they have paid comparatively little attention to the phenomenon of human evil.
  • Page.

• Lying is both a cause and a manifestation of evil.
  • Chapter 2

• Compartmentalization is not the root of all evil; it is, however, the principal psychological mechanism of evil. Deprive an evil man of his capacity to compartmentalize, and he will be like a general without an army. Or better yet, he will undergo a conversion to goodness — a conversion to integrity.
  • Page 101-103.

• Whenever the roles of individuals within a group become specialized, it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group. In this way, not only does the individual forsake his conscience but the conscience of the group as a whole can become so fragmented and diluted as to be nonexistent.
  • Page 249.

• Satan has no power except in a human body.
  • Page.

• The only power that Satan has is through human belief in its lies.
  • Page 237.

• The reality of the matter is that the naming of evil is still in a primitive stage.
  • Page 99-101.

• I know no more accurate epithet for Satan than the Father of Lies.
  • Page 237.

• ... As (Malachi) Martin points out, it is terribly important to understand that Satan is a spirit. I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible in the way that matter is tangible. It no more has horns, hooves, and a forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something basically nameless... It is spirit.
  • Page 224.

• By allowing ourselves to be easily and blatantly defrauded, we as a whole people participated in the evil of the Johnson administration. The evil — the years of lying and manipulation — of the Johnson administration was directly conducive to the whole atmosphere of lying and manipulation and evil that pervaded our presence in Vietnam during those years. It was in this atmosphere that My Lai occurred in March 1968. Task Force Barker was hardly even aware that it had run amok that day, but, then, America was not significantly aware either in early 1968 that it too had almost unredeemably lost its bearings.
  • Page 279, Arrow UK edition (1990).

The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (1987)

M. Scott Peck (1987). The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 067160192X. 

• The only real route to peace is through self-purification. We must purge ourselves of our own pride, our need to control, and our unwillingness to suffer for the sake of others. Peacemaking begins inside each of us.
  • p. 275

• The problem of evil is perhaps the most fundamental of all human problems.
  True community is always in a state of almost constant terror at the problem of human evil.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum.

• In any case, in Vietnam it was the extraordinary power of nationalism, not communism, that brought the United States to its knees. To oppose legitimate nationalism is to do so at our peril.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum.

• At one point I allowed myself to become involved in a project called the Peace Train. It started as a fine idea but soon began to acquire all the trappings of a cult. People were surrendering their critical judgment to the leaders and suppressing their differences for the sake of an emotional high. When I recognized what was happening, I pulled out. I had no desire to become a guru, nor to see community used as a means of control.
  The Peace Train itself turned out to be terribly boring. What passed for excitement was mostly posturing. I found myself dreading the meetings and relieved when it finally came to an end.
  • Chapter 10 “The Foundation and the Peace Movement,” pp. 271–273

Further Along The Road Less Travelled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth (1993)

M. Scott Peck (1993). Further Along The Road Less Travelled. Simon & Schuster. p. 215. ISBN 9780684847238. 

• 
  But when I did finally come to read the Gospels, I did so with a dozen years of experience of trying in my own way to be a teacher or healer, so I knew a little something about teaching and healing and what it is like to be a teacher and healer. With this experiential knowledge under my belt, I was absolutely thunderstruck by the extraordinary reality of the man I found in the Gospels. I discovered a man who was almost continually frustrated. His frustration leaps out at me from virtually every page: “What do I have to say to you? How many times do I have to say it? What do I have to do to get through to you?” I also discovered a man who was frequently sad and sometimes depressed, frequently anxious and scared. A man who was prejudiced on one occasion, although He was able to overcome that prejudice and transcend it in healing love. A man who was terribly, terribly lonely, yet often desperately needed to be alone. I discovered a man so incredibly real that no one could have made Him up.
  It occurred to me then that if the Gospel writers had been into PR and embellishment, as I had assumed, they would have created the kind of Jesus three quarters of Christians seem to be trying to create — what Lilly refers to as “the wimpy Jesus.” He is portrayed with a sweet, unending smile on His face, patting little children on the head, just strolling the earth with this unflappable, unshakable equanimity, because with His mellow-yellow Christ consciousness, He’s got peace of mind. But the Jesus of the Gospels — who some suggest is the best-kept secret of Christianity — did not have much “peace of mind,” as we ordinarily think of peace of mind in the world’s terms, and insofar as we can be His followers, perhaps we won’t either. Perhaps that’s not the point.
  So that’s when I began to suspect that, rather than being public relations specialists, the Gospel writers were accurate reporters, generally going to great pains to record as accurately as possible the events and sayings in the life of a man they themselves hardly began to understand, but in whom they knew that Heaven and earth had met. And that’s when I began to fall in love with Jesus.
  It is as if most Christians haven’t read the Gospels, and most Christian clergy are not even able to preach the real truth of the Gospels, because if they did, their congregations would flee out the door.
  I don’t want to imply that the Gospels are totally accurate. Some things obviously seem to have been added. Others seem to me to be obviously missing. Jesus’ sense of humor, for instance, and His sexuality. The latter may have been left out on purpose because Jesus’ sexuality seems to me rather ambiguous. He appears to have been very fond of Mary Magdalene, who might have been a prostitute, and He is frequently pictured in an intimate pose with the Apostle John, who is referred to as “the one whom Jesus loved.” I believe that Jesus was an androgynous figure; that is, not without sex, but whole. What does survive, however, shows Jesus to be really human, and a divine genius.
  • Pages 160-161, UK edition.

• You may remember that The Road Less Travelled opened with the sentence "Life is difficult." And to that great truth, I will now add another translation:
  Life is complex.
  • p. 13

• It occurred to him (Carl Jung) that it was perhaps no accident that we traditionally referred to alcoholic drinks as ‘spirits’, and that perhaps alcoholics were people who had a greater thirst for the spirit than others, and that perhaps alcoholism was a spiritual disorder or, better yet, a spiritual condition.
  
  • Page.

• It is important to realize that cults are a dime a dozen and that a great many businesses are cults.
  • p. 123

• One issue where Christian theology and the New Age movement tend to part company radically concerns the issue of evil. Christian doctrine holds that evil is real. Eastern religions do not consider it to be real. They consider it to be illusion or false knowledge, what they call maya.
  I do not claim there is nothing to this view. There is no doubt in my mind that by thinking of evil we can create it. If we read the demonic into everything with which we disagree – as many Stage Two religious folk are prone to do – then we will cause fragmentation and hostility rather than healing. Through the New Age movement, however, the simplistic idea has spread that if we could just change our thinking, we would realise there’s no such thing as evil in the world. It would all just go away, vanish. But the reality is that there really are people out there who like to maim, to torture, and to crush other people. There are people who want war because they profit from war. And you can get into serious trouble if you believe that there aren’t. Because sooner or later you will be accosted with real evil, and dealing with it will not be as easy as some New Age books imply.
  • p. 201

• The one New Age book that has attracted the most attention, and the one that I am most often asked about, is A Course in Miracles. It is a very good book, filled with a lot of first-rate psychiatric wisdom. But A Course in Miracles also denies the reality of evil, saying that evil is unreal, a kind of figment of our imagination. This is not all that far from the truth, because evil does have a great deal to do with unreality. In fact, in my book People of the Lie, I defined Satan as ‘a real spirit of unreality’. So evil does have a great deal to do with unreality — that is, with lies and untruth. But that doesn’t mean that it in itself doesn’t exist.
  While A Course in Miracles purports to be Christian, it distorts Christian doctrine. It is not all the truth; rather, it is a half-truth, and in failing to deal with the problem of evil, it leaves out a major part of the picture. It runs with only one side of the ‘paradox’ of evil.
  • Part IV – “The Mystery of Evil,” pp. 148–149.

• There are also, I believe, good addictions of a sort, and I have been blessed (or cursed) by one of them: an addiction to consciousness.

• But one of the best definitions for evil is that it is 'militant ignorance'. Militant unconsciousness.
  The Vietnam War is one of the best examples I know of this militant ignorance on a grand scale.
  • Page 10, UK 2010 edition.

• It is human to be shy.
  • M. Scott Peck (1993). Further Along The Road Less Travelled. Simon & Schuster. 

The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety (1997)

M. Scott Peck (1997). The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-83561-7. 

• I see no value whatsover in unconstructive suffering.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• I have had the opportunity to meet a great number of wonderful, deep-thinking people, and I have never met such a person who was not basically shy. A few of them had not thought of themselves as shy, but as we talked about it, they came to realize that they were. And the very few people I have met who were not the least bit shy were people who had been seriously damaged in some way, who had lost some of their humanity.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• One of the major dilemmas we face both as individuals and as a society is simplistic thinking — or the failure to think at all. It is not just a problem, it is the problem.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• If all the energy required to think seems troublesome, the lack of thinking causes far more trouble and conflict for ourselves as individuals and for the society in which we live.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• From my practice as a psychiatrist and my experience and observations in general, I have become familiar with the common errors related to the failure to think well. One, of course, is simply not thinking. Another is making assumptions in thinking, through the use of one-dimensional logic, stereotypes, and labelling. Another problem is the belief that thinking and communication don’t require much effort. Another is assuming that thinking is a waste of time, which is a particular factor in the quiet rage we experience around the failure to solve many social problems.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 27 UK edition.

• ... For the most part, we tend to label for the wrong reasons. When we use labelling to make assumptions and unjustly discriminate against others - or to make excuses for ourselves - we infer broader qualities about a person or a situation without the information necessary to support our conclusions. Sometimes, the consequences can be destructive not only to others but to ourselves.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 40-41 UK edition.

• I believe that all psychological disorders are bascially disorders of consciousness. They are not rooted in the unconscious but in a conscious mind that refuses to think and is unwilling to deal with certain issues, bear certain feelings, or tolerate pain. These issues, feelings , or desires are in the unconscious only because a pain-avoiding conscious mind has thrust them there.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 77 UK edition.

• ... Thinking and consciousness are inextricably locked together in a parallel relationship. Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking, and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness. Anytime there is a failure in thinking, there is a corresponding deficit in a person’s level of consciousness. Thus, all human behavior—the good, the bad, and the indifferent—is determined by the extent, or lack thereof, of the quality of thinking and consciousness involved.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 78 UK edition.

• Radical thinkers are also independent thinkers.
  • M. Scott Peck, the Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• Again and again all of the great religions tell us that the path away from narcissism is the path toward meaning in life.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 119 UK edition.

• I believe that the differences between those who are actively religious or spiritual and those who are not are generally not so much random as developmental.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. Page 248 UK edition.

• I want to scream this from the rooftops: ‘All symptoms are overdetermined.’ Except that I want to expand it way beyond psychiatry. I want to expand it to almost everything. I want to translate it, ‘Anything of any significance is overdetermined. Everything worth thinking about has more than one cause.’ Repeat after me: ‘For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.’ … Because we assume there is a reason for everything, we go looking for it when we should be looking for them.
  • p. 22.

• Almost as horrific as evil itself is the denial of it, as in the case of those who go through life wearing rose-coloured glasses.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• The mystery of goodness is greater than that of evil.
  • M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety.

• Whenever someone is bold enough to ask me, ‘Dr. Peck, what is human nature?’ my first answer is likely to be ‘Human nature is to go to the bathroom in your pants.’
  ... If there is a good relationship between the child and the parent, and if the parent is not too impatient or overcontrolling (and unfortunately, these favorable conditions are often not met, which is the major reason that we psychiatrists are so interested in toilet training), then something quite wonderful happens.
  • p. 214

• In my practice as a psychotherapist, I would routinely tell my patients, "Psychotherapy is not about happiness; it is about power. If you go the whole route here, I cannot guarantee that you will leave one jot happier. What I can guarantee you is that you will leave more competent".
  • Page 80, UK edition.

• The individual with a secular consciousness essentially thinks that he is the center of the universe. Such people tend to be quite intelligent. They know full well that they are but one of six billion human beings scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet that is a small fragment of a tiny solar system within a galaxy among countless galaxies, and that each of those other human beings also thinks that he is the center of the universe. Consequently, intelligent though they may be, people with a secular consciousness are prone to feel a bit lost within this hugeness and, despite their "centrality," to often experience a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance.
  The person with a sacred consciousness, on the other hand, does not think of himself as the center of the universe. For him the center resides elsewhere, specifically in God — in the Sacred. Yet despite this lack of centrality, he is actually less likely to feel himself insignificant or meaningless than the secularist is, because he sees himself existing in relationship with that Sacred Other, and it is from this relationship that he derives his meaning and significance.
  Sometimes people fall in between, with one foot planted in sacred consciousness and the other in secular consciousness...
  • pp. 246-247

• Yet despite all the hype with which the candidates and the press and the networks attempt to create an entertaining spectacle out of politics, we must try to remember that politics is real. It should not be the drama of images. It is the drama of reality. Millions, billions of real lives are at stake.
  • p. 232,

• ... It is common for consciousness to be treated almost as it were a common cold, contagious or potentially deadly if one spreads deep thinking too much to those in one's environment.... Being aware is often greeted with suspicion and trepidation...
  • P. 87 UK edition.

• When I wrote The Road Less Travelled, I never gave a definition of maturity, but I did describe in the book a number of immature people. It seems to me that what most characterizes immature people is that they sit around complaining that life does not meet their demands. On the other hand, what characterizes those relative few who are fully mature is that they see life as their responsibility — even as an opportunity to meet its demands. Indeed, when we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey of life, we begin to see life from a totally different perspective.
  • P. 130, UK edition.

• I wrote of this in People of the Lie. Using My Lai as a case study, I demonstrated how evil at an institutional and group level occurs when there is a fragmentation of consciousness – and conscience.
  • P. 207, UK edition.

• ... We also need to become increasingly conscious to identify and relish what is good and beautiful in this life.
  • P. 210 UK edition.

• It can be argued that one reason many view evil as more prevalent than ever is a result of the fact that our standards have improved.
  • P. 211 UK edition.

• Liberation theology proclaims that Christians are called to play an active role in doing battle with the systemic sins and evils of society – called to take responsibility for liberating people from the burdens of poverty and oppression... As (Tom) Langford points out, people who focus exclusively on liberation become fanatic and glum...
  • P. 212-213, UK edition.

Other quotes of Scott awaiting references

• Millions of Christians smugly sit around believing that they don't have to do anything because they've been redeemed, and they thereby contribute to that public apathy that is so poisonous.
  • M. Scott Peck

• Evil is revolting because it is dangerous. It will contaminate or otherwise destroy a person who remains too long in its presence.
  • M. Scott Peck

Paraphrases of work of M. Scott Peck (Mostly from ChatGPT)

• Paraphrase: The observant and thoughtful among us will have noticed that evil is by far the more common phenomenon. Genuine goodness is rare.

• Paraphrase: There is no virtue inherent in unconstructive suffering. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. If we can be open to learning from our pain, then we are truly growing; if we merely wallow in it, we are not.
  • The Road Less Travelled.

• Paraphrase: We live in a profoundly mysterious universe, and it is a universe in which we are constantly being called to grow.
  • Further Along the Road Less Travelled.

• Paraphrase: If masochism is as common as it seems to be, then it should not surprise us that human evil exists, or occurs.

• Paraphrase: Since the primary characteristic of evil is laziness, and since laziness is so common, it is obvious that evil is commonplace.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: Evil is actively opposed to love. It is not laziness but militant refusal. It is anti-love.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: Evil originates in failure to acknowledge one’s own pain and sin.

• Paraphrase: I actually think that most people are consciously evil and unconsciously good. I can kind of explain why people are consciously evil, and find it much harder to explain why they are unconsciously good.

• Paraphrase: Evil may be thought of as a failure to complete the Oedipal process.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: The successful resolution of the Oedipal situation permits the growth of love beyond the family; failure to resolve it results in dependency, narcissism, and immaturity in one’s capacity to love.
  • The Road Less Travelled.

• Paraphrase: Evil is the complete absence of self-development. It is the refusal to undergo the suffering required for growth.
  Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Evil, however, is an active failure to love. It is not merely a sin of omission but of commission.
  The evil are people who refuse to acknowledge their own failures, who instead place the burden of their sins upon others and thereby destroy others in order to preserve their own self-image of perfection.
  Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: Evil has no depth. It is not creative. It is not even in the least bit interesting. It is boring. It is banal.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: In theological language evil is not just a defect but a real spirit of unreality. It is that which refuses to acknowledge reality, to acknowledge truth; it is, therefore, a form of unconsciousness.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: Hannah Arendt has written of the ‘banality of evil.’ She was speaking of the Nazi bureaucrats who performed their monstrous duties with the same bland efficiency as they would any other job. It is a fitting phrase. Evil is banal. It is utterly unoriginal. It is simply the absence of love.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: Many people, because they have not successfully resolved the Oedipal stage, remain emotionally children; they are afraid to grow up, afraid to risk independence, afraid to risk real love.
  • People of the Lie.

• Paraphrase: We should empty ourselves of masochism not repress it. The repression of emotions causes all mental illnesses.
  • I am not sure from what book (yet) but Scott wrote this exact sentiment in at least one if not more of his books.

• Paraphrase: We (the U.S) lost the Vietnam War and we didn't do the necessary introspective work of the natural post-war psychological depression on ourselves after the war had ended. Most U.S citizens around at the time didn't learn much from that war.

• Paraphrase: The whole point of having a brain is to use it by thinking.

External links

• M. Scott Peck, M.D. – website
• M. Scott Peck Quotes and Tribute Page – DJP (Facebook)