Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.

Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.

I've always found people to be by far the biggest problem-causers in life.

Without scheming to do wrong, or to make others unhappy, there may be error and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Never attribute to malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance.

If we don't understand phenomena, we are more likely to do things to harm ourselves and others.

It was easy to be the bad guy throughout.

Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball.

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

Anybody can be very destructive in that position without at all meaning to be, and I know that I have been inadvertently destructive in the past for certain people on certain occasions.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

Stupidity without malice isn't horrible; some people can't help it.

I hate when people talk about certain guys and say they can't work together.

So often people read conspiracy into a thing when it's really a confluence of cock-ups and the wrong button being pressed at the wrong time, or the guest you wanted gets into the wrong taxi and doesn't show up.

I've played the villain before, but my baddies have always entertained.

I like to play physical, and I'm a big guy, and I think sometimes - maybe sometimes I am pushing somebody, and I don't realize how hard I'm pushing them. And then they do it back, and it's kind of like, 'Jeez!'

I always enjoyed being a villain more, probably because you get to do and say a lot of things you wouldn't do in real life.

People can be stunningly unobservant.

Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

I think - I think - I think how little they think what lies so near them.

At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.

A little neglect may breed great mischief.

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.