Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

What 'Twilight Zone' did was show we all have a great capacity for good and evil.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

In very general terms 'Top Of The Lake' is about good and evil. It's a deep dark mystery. It also deals with lots of fascinating human relationships, and it's also about the battle of the sexes.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

The foundations of society have cracked as a result of the revolutionary reforms....The definitions and boundary lines of good and evil have disappeared.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

Vice, by comparison with terrible accidents, has its own peculiar explanation. For, in a way, it does occur in accordance with the rationale of nature, and its occurrence is not, so to speak, useless in relation to the whole world. For otherwise, the good would not exist, either.

Every man should view himself as equally balanced: half good and half evil. Likewise, he should see the entire world as half good and half evil.... With a single good deed he will tip the scales for himself, and for the entire world, to the side of good.

Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.

With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.

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.

The balance between good and evil, and the choices we make between them, are probably the single most important aspects shaping our personalities and humanity.

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?

Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.

Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us.

Evil perpetually tends to disappear.

In what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible.

They are inherently good - the bad reactions aren't basic. Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil - but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency - you may say goodness - of the human being.

Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick.

I believe it's true that there's good and evil in everyone and it's a constant struggle to have your better angels prevail.

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.