Daniel Defoe Quotes

I saw the horrible way that people could treat each other. That may be the saddest thing of all. I saw greed and anger and murder and a total lack of concern for human life. It was a wicked side of the human soul that I saw... and it saddened me to know that such a dark place existed.

Every fresh act of sin lessens fear and remorse, hardens our hearts, blunts the edge of our conscience, and increases our evil inclination.

The devil comes in many guises-anger in the form of justice-passion in the form of duty. When it first comes, the man knows and then he forgets. Just as your pleaders' conscience; at first they know it is all Badmashi (roguery), then it is duty to their clients; at last they get hardened.

The priests, either from indulgence or carelessness, have allowed the wicked to give loose reins to their lusts

… the most depraved wretches on earth.

I feel like every time you think you really understand how deep the seductive power of evil is, it always proves to be one step deeper than you thought possible.

Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it themselves.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

No one becomes depraved all at once.

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

A sinful heart makes feeble hand.

Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.

. . . if gold rust, what then will iron do?/ For if a priest be foul in whom we trust/ No wonder that a common man should rust. . . .

If the world suffers from mental deterioration or from moral degradation, then something goes wrong at the very root of civilization or culture. Even though that civilization may drag out for a considerable period, it grows less and less vital and ultimately tumbles down.

The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.

O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.

When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.

The heart of man is "deceitful and desperately wicked."

But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.

The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.