Jodi Picoult Quotes

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some individuals … while the same acts are immoral for others …

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

What were good and evil, really, but stupid categories? Stupid categories that restricted people and punished or rewarded them based on how they responded to their own natures, natures they really didn't have any way to control.

There isn't a definite right and wrong anyway. Sometimes we do what seems wrong, but we have good reasons for doing it, so it's not wrong after all.

And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

Our human situation no longer permits us to make armed dichotomies between those who are good and those who are evil, those who are right and those who are wrong. The first blow dealt to the enemy's children will sign the death warrant of our own.

If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications.

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that there's no such thing as evil; it's all in your point of view. To one group a suicide bomber is the antichrist and to one he's a hero.

One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.

Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world.

My idea of what's good and bad and right and wrong is maybe greyer than most, and I like writing about that.

Every crime, even the most atrocious, may be justified.

Of God and Evil, there is nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and Evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.

Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! Beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.

Even people that are evil believe what they're doing is good. I don't agree with those people, but it's about understanding that there are those kinds of points of view.

A lot of the best villains are the ones that think they are right. That think they are the good guy.

Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.

Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.

It’s true that someone will always say that good and evil don’t exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it’s because their chemical structures are different. Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn’t seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?