Daisaku Ikeda Quotes

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

Our criteria for deciding what's good and what's bad is very fickle, especially in this country.

I always end up taking people that are morally ambiguous.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

The infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the next.

No political event can be judged outside of the era and the circumstances in which it took place.

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's purely good or purely evil myself. I think most of us live with some varying degrees between the two.

Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned - could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change.

Men are products, expressions, reflections; they live to the extent that they coincide with their epoch, or to the extent that they differ markedly from it.

Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

One century's saint is the next century's heretic ... and one century's heretic is the next century's saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, Heaven knows, anything goes. The world has gone mad today, and good's bad today, and black's white today, and day's night today.

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.

Custom ... changes the very nature of things; and what was honorable a thousand years ago, may probably be looked upon as infamous now.

The interesting thing about Sherlock is that he is himself a reflection of that very English duality. As a drug addict, he is a criminal. But he is also a crime fighter. That makes him an extremely potent character to personify the hypocrisy of a culture that is both moralistic and corrupt.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows?

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest.