The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
Saul Alinsky
1. "Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience."
Blaise Pascal, "Pensées"
Other categories: Sin and Conscience
2. "Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad."
Denis Diderot, "Selected Writings"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
3. "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
Stephen King
Other categories: Various
4. "It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it."
George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"
5. "When you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
Other categories: Various
6. "The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are."
Karl Kraus
7. "What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
Other categories: Love
8. "The real genres: good and bad."
Franz Grillparzer, "Poems"
9. "If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers."
Charles Dickens, "The Old Curiosity Shop"
Other categories: Law and Crime
10. "There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous."
Blaise Pascal, "Pensées"
Other categories: Sin and Conscience
11. "Keep always busy so that the devil will find you always engaged."
St. Jerome, "Epistulae"
Other categories: Sin and Conscience -:- Work and Laziness
12. "Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better."
George Santayana
Other categories: Various
13. "Man is neither angel nor beast, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would play the angel plays the beast."
Blaise Pascal, "Pensées"
Other categories: Human
14. "Evil is something you recognize immediately you see it: it works through charm."
Brian Masters
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness
15. "The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration."
Jose Ortega y Gasset, "Meditations on Quixote"
Other categories: Nature and Animals
16. "There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless."
William Somerset Maugham, "The Summing Up"
17. "Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced."
Aldous Huxley, "Grey Eminence"
18. "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time."
George Orwell, "Collected Essays"
19. "Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too."
Aldous Huxley, "Time Must Have a Stop"
20. "Tolerance is only another name for indifference."
William Somerset Maugham, "A Writer’s Notebook"
Other categories: Egoism -:- Friendship and Hostility
21. "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Other categories: Oration and Silence
22. "War is not a true adventure. It is a mere ersatz. Where ties are established, where problems are set, where creation is stimulated — there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Flight to Arras"
Other categories: Peace and War
23. "Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."
Arabic proverb
24. "When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Journals"
Other categories: Patriotism
25. "Sin promises like a God but pays like a Devil."
Ralph Venning
Other categories: Sin and Conscience
26. "One kind word can warm three winter months."
Japanese proverb
Other categories: Various
27. "In time of war, the devil makes more room in hell."
German proverb
Other categories: Peace and War
28. "To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it."
Ayn Rand
29. "He who stops being better stops being good."
Oliver Cromwell
30. "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Steve Biko
Other categories: Justice
31. "Hands that help are holier than lips that pray."
Sathya Sai Baba
Other categories: Various
32. "Music can change the world because it can change people."
Bono (U2)
Other categories: Art and Culture
33. "Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil."
Jerry Garcia
34. "Of two evils, choose neither."
Charles Spurgeon
35. "Charity begins at home, but should not end there."
Thomas Fuller
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
36. "I believe in compulsory cannibalism... if people were forced to eat what they kill, we would have no more wars."
Abbie Hoffman
Other categories: Peace and War
37. "If you talk to gangsters long enough, you'll find out that they're just as bad as respectable people."
Murray Kempton
Other categories: Law and Crime
38. "Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community."
St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae"
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Law and Crime
39. "Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms."
George Savile
40. "The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress."
Philip Roth
Other categories: Work and Laziness
41. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
Jim Elliot
Other categories: Various
42. "The next time the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future."
(?)
Other categories: Time and Passing
43. "In doing nothing men learn to do evil."
Cato the Elder
Other categories: Work and Laziness
44. "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil."
Francis Herbert Bradley
45. "The world is composed of givers and takers. The takers may eat better, but the givers sleep better."
(?)
Other categories: Justice
46. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
Charles Baudelaire
47. "Don't let anybody walk trough your mind with dirty feet."
Mahatma Gandhi
48. "Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values."
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Other categories: Friendship and Hostility
49. "Good and evil keep very exact accounts [...] and the face of every man is their ledger."
James Branch Cabell
50. "If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart."
proverb
Other categories: Richness and Money
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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