A Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Quote Topics

Being Believe Doing Evil First First Of All Good Human Human Being Must

Quote Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Russian - Novelist
December 11, 1918 - August 3, 2008

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

T. S. Eliot

A lot of people don't believe there's evil. If there's good in this world, then you're being intellectually dishonest, if you believe there's a good power, you've also got to believe there's an evil power, too. There are physical laws that are in place.

Si Robertson

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.

George MacDonald

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.

Frederick Lenz

We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.

George Bernard Shaw

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

They are inherently good - the bad reactions aren't basic. Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil - but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency - you may say goodness - of the human being.

Norman Vincent Peale

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.

Samuel Johnson

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

Pope Francis

In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.

Felix Frankfurter

I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.

Malcolm X

I do not permit affection or lack thereof to influence my actions. There is good, and there is evil. The good must be protected, the evil eradicated. I have shown you the triumph of evil as a caution.