Ellen Hopkins Quotes

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

The good, we do it; the evil, that is fortune; man is always right, and destiny always wrong.

It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.

Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.

I think evil is very relative.

Man is a child of his environment.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

No one is born evil; it's just the choices that they make.

I used to think that capitalism was human nature. Now I know that it is culture.

Do not understand me as intimating that the black race are by nature more depraved than the whites, for I believe the whole human family without regard to race or complexion are creatures of circumstance we are all more or less influenced by the surroundings. Abuses of matrimonial obligations by the blacks have not only been tolerated by the whites, but has been for ages encouraged and sanctioned by influencial [sic] legislative bodies. Therefore the wonder is that it is no worse.

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.

Everyone is a product of their own environment, and that, I think, has actually been the key lesson for me.

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

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

There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.

The difference between a serial killer and a saint is environment. That's a very hard thing to accept because that raises a lot of questions

Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.

Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but it is not in itself efficacious. Teaching is like a mirror. It can show you if your face is dirty, but it the mirror will not wash your face.

I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he is about to commit a sin or offence. It is child’s play for God. Why did He not kill war lords? Why did He not remove the fury of war from their minds? In this way God could have saved humanity from great calamity and horror.

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.

Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.

Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.