Musonius Rufus, Fragments 23

What indictment can we make against tyrants when we ourselves are much worse than they? 

 
For we have the same impulses as theirs, but not the same opportunity to indulge them.
 
If I am feeling especially self-righteous on a certain day, I will paint the man who thinks and acts differently from me as an enemy, and I will insist that we have absolutely nothing in common. 
 
He is wrong, and I am right, and the delineation between us is absolutely clear. This puts me under the illusion that I can sleep the sleep of the just, while he must be forever tormented for his sins. 
 
Yet it isn’t always that simple, is it? Do I not also feel the pull of jealousy and resentment, much as he does? Am I to deny that I too am easily tempted to insult and injury? Is my mind as empty of deception, and my heart as clear of malice, as I might like to claim? 
 
Sometimes the only real difference between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the bully and the victim, is a presence or absence of the power to act out our wishes. 
 
Let me not be too quick to judge, saying that I would never choose to do what he does, when I really mean that I don’t have the means do what he does. 
 
To understand this does not require that I have to wallow in my own guilt, but rather that I should redirect my efforts to compassion instead of condemnation. 
 
We are more alike that we are willing to admit. That can be a chance to grow better together, instead of drawing imaginary lines in the sand. 
 
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
 
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago