William Golding Quotes

Before the Second World War, I believed in the perfectability of social man; that a correct structure of society produced goodwill; and that, therefore, you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. It is possible that I believe something of the same again; but after the war, I did not because I was unable to.

The animating doctrine of early-20th-century Progressivism, with its faith in the perfectibility of man, held that social ills could be corrected by means of education. People do bad things, in this view, because they don’t know any better; they harm themselves and others because they have bad information. That view is almost totally false, as a moment’s reflection on the many monstrous acts perpetrated by highly educated and well-informed criminals and tyrants should indicate.

They say great times make great men. I don't buy it. I saw a lot of weakness, a lot of filth. People who should have risen to the challenge and either couldn't or wouldn't. Greed, fear, stupidity and hate. I saw it before the war, I see it today. [...] I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.

We say we embrace humanity, but what does that mean? We are all defined by our limits, so to what extent can we embrace all this? Because we all contain within ourselves equally the capacity for kindness, as much as for cruelty or evil. And the best of us are able to suppress those baser impulses, instincts. That's the war within.

And it is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes family and a state.

Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.

One has personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

It's easy to explain away evil. We have a free choice, and our greatest blessing is also our greatest curse, because I don't always make good choices. Other people make bad choices. I make bad choices. And sometimes we hurt other people. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reigns.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done

The only war that we must all fight is the one against evil.

There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered.

all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt.

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fences, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our own hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

War is unnatural, it causes people to act unnaturally.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.

Did not Jesus say, resist not evil — with evil? Is not war the worst form of that evil.

Three sparks - pride, envy, and avarice - have been kindled in all hearts.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

Unlike other vices, cruelty, alas, is never boring.

We are fundamentally good, and evil is an aberration.