Marilynne Robinson Quotes

I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil."

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

I used to think the world was divided into good people and bad people, that you could pin responsibility for evil on certain definite people and punish the guilty. I’m still going through the motions.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil." I think even like Saddam Hussein or Hitler would wake up and say, "I think it's going to be a good day. I'm gonna do some really important work." And given their definition of good, they went out and did horrible things.

I like to think that good people win. But even good people have other sides. Most people will slow down to get a good look at an accident, even though they won't admit it.

I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.

I always think that, even when people behave badly, if you like something deep inside them, then there is a tiny bit of nobility - they wish they could be good.

I have this theory that there are two kinds of people in the world, people who stop at a traffic accident and those that just drive by. If I see a traffic accident, I am going to stop. I do notice. I don't think that makes me a good or bad person, or anybody else better or worse.

The point is not that I don't recognise bad people when I see them — I grant you I may quite well be taken in by them — the point is that I know a good person when I see one.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

People are more twisted than people think.

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.

All I am really promoting in the books is the Golden Rule, which I hope everybody knows to be "do as you would be done by." It has one or 2 flaws, but it is a good soundbite. Evil starts when you treat other people as things. There are perhaps worse crimes, but they begin when you treat other people as things.

I don't believe in good people and bad people. I believe in the better parts of people.

There are people who have lost every trace of human kindness.

It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back.

If you start out looking at somebody, wondering whether he's good or bad, I think you're starting out in the wrong direction. I think we're all good and we're all bad.

I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?

It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.

People are now looking at the world in terms of axis of evil and evil-doers and by logical extension good-doers, and that's a very polarised look at good and bad people. Reality is much more complex than that and people can be good and evil on the very same day.

Even if you become sympathetic for somebody who has done something terrible, I don't think that necessarily makes what they did look cool.

You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.

I firmly believe that we're all good people, but sometimes it's hard to understand how to do good.