The Banality of Systemic Evil

Re:The Banality of Systemic Evil by gruseom on Tuesday September 24, 2013 @12:22PM (#6438837)

I doubt that Plato said that.

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Re:The Banality of Systemic Evil by tptacek on Wednesday September 25, 2013 @08:59AM (#6444231)

Misquoted. According to Respectfully Quoted, this maxim is unverified. In fact, however, it is drawn from Plato's Republic. Paul Shorey offers a literal translation: "But the chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule" (Book 1, Section 347c). Since Plato specifically addresses those unwilling to govern (), rather than those who are simply indifferent, the accurate translation unfortunately does not apply as broadly to think-tank work as the misquotation does.

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Re:The Banality of Systemic Evil by gruseom on Wednesday September 25, 2013 @12:30PM (#6445566)

Thanks! The fact that there's a path back to the original makes that one less spurious than it sounded.

There was quite a good article recently about how quotes turn into misquotes and eventually proverbs: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Who-Really-Said-That-/14155...

There are basically three kinds of Wrongly Attributed Statements. WAS I is an adaptation or composite of a statement or statements from someone or several people, who may or may not be famous. WAS II is a statement that was uttered, as is, by someone, often not famous, that has come to be widely attributed to someone else, invariably more famous. WAS III was never uttered by anyone, at least not that we know of.

So this was a WAS I. :)

Edit: Actually, this article is better than quite good. It's the best one I've seen on the topic and quite fun and one could even call it definitive.

Edit 2: Ok, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6445595.

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