Havelock Ellis Quotes

It's true that Paris is made up of equal parts of social conservatism and anarchic experimentation, but foreigners never quite know where to place the moral accent mark.

I love the gray area between right and wrong.

I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair.

With any villain, you have to see things from their point of view and understand that they think what they're doing will make the world a better place.

I always tried to play the bad guys as guys who didn't know they were bad guys. There are villains we run into all the time, but they don't think they are doing anything wrong. If they do, they think they are cunning and smart. When people break laws and ethical rules, they justify it in their own terms.

I don't believe so much in good and evil.

Good and bad are not really relevant to me.

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

I believe that Western civilization, after some disgusting glitches, has become almost civilized. I believe it is our first duty to protect that civilization. I believe it is our second duty to improve it. I believe it is our third duty to extend it if we can.

The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.

To strictest justice many ills belong, And honesty is often in the wrong.

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed.

What is forgotten, however, is that many times the Good we create leads to Evil that will destroy us.

The interesting thing about Sherlock is that he is himself a reflection of that very English duality. As a drug addict, he is a criminal. But he is also a crime fighter. That makes him an extremely potent character to personify the hypocrisy of a culture that is both moralistic and corrupt.

Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.

They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels weren't entirely sure that this was a good thing.

Wizard's Second Rule The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

Our best performances are so stained with sin, that it is hard to know whether they are good works or bad works.

To me, nothing is more vibrant than having the power to do something but not having the experience of knowing what's right and what's wrong.