Graham Greene Quotes

They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time.

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

I don't know how to play evil.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.

The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.

You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?" "It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize." "Must be a human thing." "Exactly.

Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. This isn’t a good idea. This isn’t right.” “There’s all kinds of right,” he murmured. “On the spectrum, we’re still in the safe zone.” ... “Definitely right. Usually right,” Patch continued. “Mostly right. Maybe right.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

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.

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.

You can't slice up morals.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

Modern morality is all about perception.

Nothing has ever moulded our conscience so strongly as our knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

I have an interest in understanding evil. Who is the bad guy - the vampire who kills people and sucks their blood, or the survivalists who kill people to save their own lives? Is evil merely a creation of people? Or is there an evil nature? Or is it in the eye of the beholder? I really like these questions.

I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.