Anthony Burgess Quotes

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free." -Vergere

There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.

All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.

Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.

The act of willing this or that, of choosing among various courses of conduct, is central in the realm of ethics.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long.

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

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.

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

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.