Morality Complexity Quotes

We all have a fight - some an easy one, and some a big one, and if you have formed the idea that there is a kind of dividing line in the world, and that on the one side is the good, and on the other side the bad, why, all I can say is that you have a wrong notion of things.

Good and bad may not be dissevered; There is, as there should be, a commingling.

It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

I've played people that are on the line of evil and good, but that's life. We are always playing with the good and the bad. I see them as people. I don't see them as caricatures. I try to not make them caricatures. Maybe I fail, but I try to see what' behind them. Would I play the hero? A superhero? I don't think so. But, I play good guys. There are some there, but you have to look.

As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil.

The worst sinner has a future, even as the greatest saint has had a past. No one is so good or bad as he imagines.

You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things.

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

To me, a purely good individual or purely bad individual, that's a comic book - that's a fantasy - and I don't do fantasy.

We all are who we are. We're not necessarily good, and we're not necessarily bad. So much television, in the writing, is so one-dimensional, in that aspect, where you have your good guys and you have your bad guys.

Usually, characters that are doing something nefarious have some extra layers to them. The general rule is bad people don't necessarily think they are bad.

I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it's the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark.

Everybody has a wicked side, whether they are six or sixty, and yet so often storytelling draws a sharp line between good and evil.

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.

I think if you read the story as bad guy turns good guy, then clearly it is a cliché. But my experience, when I spent three years working with young people in the townships on issues principally around HIV/AIDS, is that people are usually neither entirely good or bad. They are usually variations of both. Just because someone is a carjacker doesn't mean they are a ruthless cold-blooded murderer.

It's more fun playing someone who isn't just a bad guy.

What intrigues me is that people kind of naturally want to label or pigeonhole the characters. They want to make it easy for themselves to go, "All right. There's the good guy, there's the bad guy, there's the girl. Okay, I get it now." But life isn't one-dimensional. The world isn't simply divided into good versus evil. I think we're all capable of both. So any time the hero does something I'm not crazy about, or the bad guy does something I can relate to, I'll find it more interesting.

If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I'll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.

My father watched all the 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' that you could imagine, along with the martial arts. So I was into all that as a youngster, and I always rooted for the bad guy.

Nobody walks through life as a pure babyface per se or a pure heel, we all have shades of grey, and there's some days we're a little better than others, and some days we're a little more ornery. And I think that I just embody that.