Helmut Schoeck Quotes

The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself

Overwhelming and astounding inequality,especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: I might have been in his place.

To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years.

Christianity provided man for the first time with supernatural beings who, he knew, could neither envy nor ridicule him.

We envy those whose possessions or achievements are a reflection on our own. They are our neighbors and equals. It is they, above all who make plain the nature of our failure.

Man's envy is at its most intense where all are almost equal; his calls for redistribution are loudest when there is virtually nothing to redistribute.