… is from page 5 of the 1987 Liberty Fund edition of Helmut Schoeck’s excellent 1966 volume, Envy:
Most of the achievements which distinguish members of modern, highly developed and diversified societies from members of primitive societies – the development of civilization, in short – are the result of innumerable defeats inflicted on envy, i.e., on man as an envious being.
Yes. It is, therefore, especially ironic that people who today call themselves “progressives” are especially active in stoking feelings of envy – in elevating this primitive, dangerous, excessively individualistic, and intensely greedy emotion into a basis for public policy.
