Science Quote by Hans Selye

A scientist best known for mapping stress into something measurable gives us a line that reads like a lab result for the human ego: the drive for approval and the fear of condemnation are not opposites. They are twin pressures in the same system. Selye’s genius here is his refusal to moralize. He doesn’t call the need for approval vain or the dread of judgment cowardly; he frames them as physiological-level appetites, as predictable as thirst. That word choice matters. “Thirst” smuggles in urgency and inevitability, suggesting we don’t simply want praise; we crave it in ways that can distort behavior. And “dread” isn’t polite concern. It’s anticipatory panic, the stress response before anything has even happened.

The subtext is a critique of performance culture avant la lettre. If approval is the reward chemical, condemnation is the electric fence: together they train us, shaping what we say, what we attempt, what we confess. The line lands because it names a contradiction most people live inside but rarely articulate: we court visibility while fearing the costs of being seen.

Contextually, Selye’s career centered on how organisms adapt under strain. Read through that lens, the quote becomes less a psychological fortune cookie than a warning about chronic social stressors. Approval and condemnation function like environmental conditions; when they dominate the “weather” of a workplace, a family, or a public sphere, people optimize for safety, not truth. The result isn’t just anxiety. It’s conformity dressed up as choice.