A Quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel
...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
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Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.
Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.
[Abortion] is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a religious evil in the beginning, no, it's a human evil. Then obviously, as with every human evil, each killing is condemned.
Evil gives you far more strings to pull. But I must say that I have never been interested in the psychology of evil, not in the slightest. Perhaps I'm not interested in evil, but in the dark sides of human beings.
The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.
What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
Consider that we live in a world predicated upon fear. The underlying assumption is that human beings are innately evil and must be groomed and controlled. That is the dichotomy that is set up within the human mind, good and evil.
Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit. And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value.
Science itself is a humanist in the sense that it doesn't discriminate between human beings, but it is also morally neutral. It is no better or worse than the ethos with and for which it is used.
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
You cannot be naïve about evil. You cannot be naïve to the reality that there are human beings and human situations which have totally identified with the dark side of reality. They are malicious. Realism teaches you to put up appropriate boundaries so that people can't do any more evil than possible. But that doesn't mean you do evil back to them.
Hell is not evil; it's a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.
I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.
Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, Mitigate, counteract, or transmute.
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