Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

What 'True Blood' does really well is that it balances on the line between good and evil - you blur the distinction between the two.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

There's always the question of what is good and evil and the gray area in between where that most people live. In everyday life, things aren't black or white, but rather there's a lot of coping and really tough decision making.

Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?

Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

I don't think there is a right or wrong anymore. Only horrible and not-quite-so-horrible.

Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

He was as honest as any criminal can hope to be.

You learn eventually that, while there are no villains, there are no heroes either. And until you make the final discovery that there are only human beings, who are therefore all the more fascinating, you are liable to miss something.

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.

You can choose who you want to be the hero [in Hard Candy], but youll be second-guessing yourself -- theres just no right answer. Our society is obsessed with finding good and finding evil, but I think were all capable of anything.

I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

No one is entirely good or evil; that is what the Warrior thinks when he has a new opponent.

There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

I find it most remarkable that we who are so intimately involved in the battle between good and evil are even more involved with the shades of gray in between them.

Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.

No one is anything but a shade of grey. It's good people making bad choices.

A villain who shares one's guilt is inevitably more attractive than a hero convinced of one's innocence.