Neil Gaiman Quotes

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.

Truth and right are above utility in all realms of thought and action.

When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

They do injury to the good who spares the bad.

The point never to lose sight of is to be guided by the correct thing, as you see it. It's the only way to approach such profound matters and retain your integrity.

I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death.

Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing.

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

I'm not a moral relativist, I do think at the end of the day there's right and wrong, there's good intentions, and then there's bad paths that you can go on even if you have good intentions and we believe that.

Modern man has so long preached a doctrine of false tolerance; he has so long believed that right and wrong were only differences in a point of view, that now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required

Freedom that ignores the transcendent difference between good and evil ends in the denial of freedom itself.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

In an average moral universal society, good people will try to do the right thing, and psychotic people will do wicked things. But if you want to make good people do wicked things, you need them to be religious.

I think that you only occasionally have to play evil because everything you're doing is.

I never condemn wrongdoing in any area.

Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.

He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for who so laboreth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish, living among men that are generally evil.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

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