Park Chan-wook Quotes

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.

I didn't have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power.

Doesn't the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes.

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

In Survivor and Finder's Fee, it is about what you would do if you could get away with it. Survivor is about your own integrity and where you draw your own ethical and moral lines. There are no rules.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.

When it's a moral grey zone, the audience has to think about what they feel and what they think is right or wrong. You want to affect your audience and make them think.

We're all caught up in circumstances, and we're all good and evil. When you're really hungry, for instance, you'll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing - well, maybe that's too strong - but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

It's easy to get into the grey zone [of ethics].

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than to be responsible and wrong.

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

The idea of 'breaking bad' and what that means in terms of the actions and decisions people make, and why they make them - it makes people question themselves in the 'What would I do?' kind of way.

There are no moral victories.

There will be good and bad, right and wrong. Your reaction of choice, good or bad, has consequences that affect you and those around you.

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly

I won't kill you but I don't have to save you.

Every unjust act, even committed for the sake of a just cause, carries its curse with it.

A sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.