Thomas Merton Quotes

Nothing [the demon] could think up was half as bad as the stuff [people] thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into their design somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction.

There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

There aren't demons flying around with horns, people are demons.

It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.

no one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For every one behind bars, another ten deserved to be behind bars, but that would put one in ten Americans behind bars.

The true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.

There is evil in all of us, and it is the mark of a man how he defies the evil within.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.

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

His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. The way of the world. Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone - pitch black.

There is a little bit of evil in all of us, and it's very easy to draw that out.

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

It is in our hearts that evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.

Three sparks - pride, envy, and avarice - have been kindled in all hearts.

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

Funny, that no matter where you are in the world, there's always someone eager to help you destroy yourself.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

Man indeed is the most noble, by creation, of all the creatures in the visible World; but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble.