| Quote | Author | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph, not merely in the end but in every moment. |
Sam Harris | born 1967 | Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press. |
Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. |
Alan W. Watts | 1915 – 1973 | |
In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, |
Bhagavad Gita | ||
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. |
Joseph Conrad | 1857 – 1924 | ‘Under Western Eyes’ Oxford dictionary of quotations |
A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. |
William Penn | 1644 – 1718 | |
If there is some end in the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the chief good. |
Aristotle | 384 – 322 BC | Aristotle first used the phrase “chief good”, concluding that it is in the fulfilling of one’s own destiny which brings happiness. : |
What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn’t lead to wisdom? And what’s wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do? |
Iain Banks | 1954 – 2013 | Use of weapons |
Is not the pleasure of feeling and exhibiting power over other beings, a principal part of the gratification of cruelty? |
John Foster | 1579 – 1625 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. |
W. H. Auden | 1907 – 1973 | |
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. |
Walter Bagehot | 1826 – 1877 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of scepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person. |
Eric Hoffer | 1898 – 1983 | |
The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil. |
Pythagoras | c 570 – c 495 BC | |
Evil is unspectacular and always human, |
W. H. Auden | 1907 – 1973 | |
It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph. |
Edmund Burke | 1729 – 1797 | Attibuted (not found in his writings) Oxford Dictionary of Quotations |
Being against evil doesn’t make you good. |
Ernest Hemingway | 1899 – 1961 | |
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. |
Socrates | c. 469 – 399 BC | |
Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen. |
Thomas à Kempis | c. 1380 – 1471 | |
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts. |
Charles Darwin | 1809 – 1882 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. |
Mary Wollstonecraft | 1759 – 1797 | |
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. |
Voltaire | 1694 – 1778 | |
If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. |
J. K. Rowling | born 1965 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban |
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. |
William Shakespeare | 1564 – 1616 | Shakespeare, W. (1602) The tragedy of Hamlet prince of Denmark,Act 2, Scene 2, Page 11 |
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defence of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God. |
H. L. Mencken | 1880 – 1956 | Minority Report |
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. |
Hannah Arendt | 1906 – 1975 | |
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. |
Blaise Pascal | 1623 – 1662 |