Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: Good and evil

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Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.
— John Wesley, evangelist and founder of Methodism (1703-1791)

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke, English statesman and political philosopher (1729-1797)

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
— Hannah Arendt, German-Jewish political philosopher and author (1906-1975)

Most people are good only so long as they believe others to be so.
— Friedrich Hebbel, German dramatist (1813-1863)

No one ever became extremely wicked suddenly.
— Juvenal, Roman satirist (c. 58-c. 127 A.D.)

The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
— Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish writer (1854-1900), Miss Prism speaking to Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart.
— Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, Russian novelist and historian (b. 1918)

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.''
— Mary Wollstonecraft, English feminist and writer (1759-1797)

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
— Denis Diderot, French philosopher, Encyclopedist and writer (1713-1784)

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