Anthony Burgess Quotes

Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.

There comes a moment in every life when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness. These decisions are made in an instant, but with repercussions that last a lifetime.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

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

If this isn’t good versus evil, what is?

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.

The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

We have freedom to do good or evil; yet to make choice of evil, is not to use, but to abuse our freedom.

The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.

If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

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

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good.

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?