A Quote by William Sloane Coffin

In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.

William Sloane Coffin

Quote Topics

Citizens Deal Evil Fellow Fellow Citizens Few Flourish Good Good Men Great Great Deal Indifferent Little Majority Men Our Our Time Power Remain Takes Time Vast Vast Majority Wrong

Quote Author

William Sloane Coffin
American - Priest
June 1, 1924 - April 12, 2006

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.

Tzvetan Todorov

For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men’s control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil’s stranglehold will be easily broken.

Andrew Bernstein

And there is the matter of abortion. We must with calmness and resolve help the vast majority of our fellow Americans understand that the more than 112 million abortions performed in America in 1980 amount to a great moral evil, an assault on the sacredness of human life.

Ronald Reagan

Good is the enemy of great.. The vast majority of good companies remain just that - good, but not great.

James C. Collins

The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence.

N. R. Narayana Murthy

For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect - people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us - then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

James C. Collins

The power and diversity of the Armed Forces, active Guard and Reserve, the resolve of our fellow citizens, the flexibility in our command to navigate international waters that remain troubled are all essential to our security.

Gerald R. Ford

We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant. But if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time?

Swami Vivekananda

Trading has taught me not to take the conventional wisdom for granted. What money I made in trading is testimony to the fact that the majority is wrong a lot of the time. The vast majority is wrong even more of the time. I've learned that markets, which are often just mad crowds, are often irrational; when emotionally overwrought, they're almost always wrong.

Richard Dennis

I assure my fellow citizens that the vast majority of Muslims experience the same fear they do. ISIS and Al Qaeda are my enemies, too. Most of the people killed by these groups have been Muslim.

Debbie Almontaser

I am proud of Russia and I am sure that the vast majority of Russian citizens have great love and respect for their Motherland. We have much to be proud of: Russian culture and Russian history. We have every reason to believe in the future of our country. But we have no obsession that Russia must be a super power in the international arena. The only thing we do is protecting our vital interests.

Vladimir Putin

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, a vast majority of the time, we surrender our true autonomy to this illusion of agency. I'm as guilty as anybody, and I write about it in a book. I'm not condemning anybody.

Douglas Rushkoff

It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.

Alexis de Tocqueville

It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.