George Bernard Shaw Quotes

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.

We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.

Biblical references about knowledge and good and evil often get tangled up.

There must be a subject to know the good and evil. Thatsubject is the ego.

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

If we're not compelled to gain a deeper understanding of good and evil, how can we make the world a better place? How can we find ourselves at the end of our lives and know that our lives were significant? Those things would be impossibilities.

The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.

Conscience is wiser than science.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

In matters of conscience that is the best sense which every wise man takes in before he hath sullied his understanding with the designs of sophisters and interested persons.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

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.

Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of.

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys. No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

I've become more forgiving, even though I have no patience at all for denial, justification of wrong, rationalization. I've become virtually a pacifist, so I feel that no atrocity is ever justified. I've become more vigilant about evil. I think I recognize its seeds more quickly. I see its source.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

I certainly know the difference between right and wrong.

Keep in mind, Eragon, that no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.

As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear, according to his actions.