Mikhail Bakunin Quotes

Nobody starts out evil - we know that. It's life circumstances that lead them to that.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

There is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

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

Good and evil are not what our parents told us, not what our church tells us, or our country, not what anybody else tells us! All of us decide good and evil for ourselves, automatically, by choosing what we want to do!

Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick.

It is false that the will, left to itself, can do good as well as evil, for it is not free, but in bondage...On the side of man there is nothing that goes before grace, unless it be impotency and even rebellion.

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.

Being evil is something that only humans are capable of.

Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.

What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.

The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be.

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone.

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

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

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.

Is virtue raised by culture, or self-sown?

Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us.

I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding.