Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes

When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called 'pure evil' because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it.

At times we used questionable means to achieve our noble ends.

Even the best-intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do.

… crimes which no law can claim to legitimize.

… sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal acts

The men under General [Zachery] Taylor’s command committed crimes that would make Heaven weep.

It's abhorrent to me that somebody is just evil, and you can't explain it.

When your leader is misbehaving, it's very easy for other people to follow that.

The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.

Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?” cried the boy. “Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. “That is the way of the world.

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

I think "immoral" is probably the wrong word to use...I prefer the word "unethical."

The terms good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking or notions, which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf; it is neither good nor bad.

Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike.

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life.

Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.

The Germans are a cruel race. Their operas last for six hours and they have no word for fluffy.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

An unkind heart is the worst. It is a plague to its possessor, and a torment to those around him.

We aren't the good guys, Anita. We're the necessary guys. -Edward

We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.

Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.