Time & Perspective Quote by Alfred A. Montapert

Anger, in Montapert's framing, isn’t a moral failing or a momentary loss of manners; it’s self-administered toxicity. The line works because it flips the usual narrative. We treat anger as a weapon we aim outward, a justified reaction to someone else’s incompetence, cruelty, or betrayal. Montapert quietly insists the blast radius is internal first. “Every time” is doing heavy lifting: it denies the comforting idea of “healthy” rage that leaves you unchanged. There’s an almost mechanistic certainty here, like a law of the body rather than a debate about ethics.

The phrase “your own system” is deliberately broad. It can mean your nervous system, your immune response, your sleep, your digestion - but also your social system, your decision-making, your identity. That ambiguity is the point: anger doesn’t just spike a heartbeat; it reorganizes the day around itself. You start scanning for more evidence, rehearsing arguments, retrofitting motives. The mind becomes a courtroom where you’re always the prosecutor and never the jury.

Context matters: Montapert belongs to that mid-century self-help-adjacent tradition that treats inner life as engineering, not mystery. The subtext is pragmatic, almost transactional: if you keep choosing anger, you’re paying for it with your body and your clarity. It’s less “forgive them” than “stop funding your own undoing.” That’s why the line has staying power - it reframes emotional discipline as self-interest, not saintliness.