John Patrick Shanley Quotes

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

It is interesting to see how humans would act if they knew there were never any consequences for their actions because the next day they could wake up and just redo it.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

I don't know how to play evil.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

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.

The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil - doers, only adds to the evil in the world.

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.

Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

A man's intentions should be allowed in some respects to plead for his actions.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

We become moral when we are unhappy.