Patrick Ness Quotes

You can't just blame things on evil. Everyone's a human, so when people say that somebody's behaving 'inhuman,' it's not. It's very human - it's just not a very nice side of it.

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.

People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.

And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn’t do or what they didn’t know. I don’t know. I guess there would always be someone to blame.

What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

Testifying has helped me understand that one individual's behavior and actions make a difference. That my actions are important to people other than myself.

Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.

Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.

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 wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.

It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.

It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don’t know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don’t know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

Never accept the blame for what evil people do. We are all responsible for our own actions." She was lecturing him, so she stopped. "Sorry. Hang around with Bran too long, and see if you don’t start passing around the Marrok’s advice as if he were Confucius.

I suppose the human race is doing the best it can but hells bells thats only an explanation its not an excuse.

My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.

I'm pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do.

It is a severe rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many allowances, and we make so few to our neighbour.

It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.

Self-respecting men and women think about the consequences of their actions-and are willing to take responsibility for them.

We are all sinful. Therefore whatever we blame in another we shall find in our own bosoms.