Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

I like to believe that most human beings go about things with a point of view that they're just doing what they feel like they need to do at that time. Sometimes people make bad decisions, but it's not evil, not malicious.

Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.

Men are not altogether bad or altogether good.

My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.

People love talking about the banality of evil and the fact that ordinary people do bad things. I actually want to stay away from that.

You know how great villains just believe in what they're doing? In their minds they're not villains, they're not doing anything wrong; they're just self-righteous in their dedication to their cause.

Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

We want to believe we are good, we are different, we are better, or we are superior. But this body of social-psychological research--and there are obviously many more experiments in addition to mine and Milgram's--shows that the majority of good, ordinary, normal people can be easily seduced, tempted, or initiated into behaving in ways that they say they never would. In 30 minutes we got them stepping across that line.

I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years, by turning, by forcing myself to separate at some level the humanity of a human being from his or her actions and recognizing that sometimes, even the moral aspects of a human being can contribute to immoral behavior.

Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

Evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.

Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing it anyway? There's always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn't a balance.

There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people.

The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody.

as I get older there is nothing more constantly astonishing to me than the goodness of the Bad; - unless it is the badness of the Good.

We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! . . . . . . Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

All of the films I have made, that I have chosen to make, are all about the thin line between good and evil. And also the thin line that exists in each and every one of us. That's what my films are about.

Where there is a choice of two evils, most men take both.