Jean de La Fontaine Quotes

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be either good or evil.

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

Anybody that has had a brush with what feels like undiluted evil often ends up asking themselves the same questions - whether it's something that was a consequence of their own actions or actions that were taken against them or actions that they were caught up in.

Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Bad people doing bad things is not interesting. What I find interesting is good people doing bad things.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

Then, in the next place, we must know that every being which is endowed with reason, and transgresses its statutes and limitations, is undoubtedly involved in sin by swerving from rectitude and justice.

Evil prospers when good men do nothing.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.

See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.

Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.

An animal takes freely anything that it wishes: it commits no sin and is not held responsible for its action because it knows no better. But as soon as the idea of 'mine' and 'thine' has been imprinted upon our consciousness, then also the responsibility comes.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

I don't believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you're spending your time doing something worthwhile.

Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

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

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity.

I'm enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about?

Men are not altogether bad or altogether good.