Roxane Gay Quotes

Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don't have to think that you might ever do these things. I don't think that's true

I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts.

You're not a bad person. But you sometimes do bad things. You know what that makes you? Human.

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

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

Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.

Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.

We've all made bad decisions, but they haven't always been resulting in the deaths of innocent people.

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.

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

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.

A man is not good or bad for one action.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

Conscience is known to be adequate in individuals; in large numbers little is to be expected of it.

I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.

There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.

We are all human, and we do bad things sometimes.

People don't think of themselves as evil.

I think we're innately good. But it doesn't mean we're gonna do good all the time. It means you have to strive.