Time & Perspective Quote by Jacob Bronowski

Bronowski goes for the jugular: not ideology, not ignorance, but a tiny, common weakness that can be weaponized. Calling cruelty a "wish" makes it intimate and voluntary, not some external force that possesses people. Then he sharpens it with "momentary intoxication" - a phrase that treats harm like a cheap high, brief but chemically persuasive. The sting is that it is temporary; you do not have to be committed to violence to be recruited by it. You only have to enjoy, for a second, the sensation of power that pain delivers.

The masterstroke is the metaphor of the "loophole". Bronowski is writing as a scientist and humanist who watched the 20th century turn bureaucracy and technology into instruments of mass death. A loophole is not a front door; it is a technicality, a flaw in an otherwise intact structure. The subtext is brutal: "ordinary men" are not safely insulated by decency or normalcy. Their moral architecture can be bypassed, not by grand arguments, but by opportunists who know where the weak seam is.

He chooses "pervert" deliberately, not as a clinical category but as a moral parasite: someone who converts private sadism into public program. The line warns against comforting myths about monsters. It suggests that the pathway to collective atrocities runs through ordinary appetites: resentment, humiliation, the thrill of punishment. Bronowski's intent is less to condemn human nature than to map a vulnerability - so it can be guarded, before the loophole becomes an entrance.