Peter Malkin Quotes

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

'Evil' is quite a blanket term. People aren't the demonic characters we would like them to be sometimes.

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.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

You can't just blame things on evil. Everyone's a human, so when people say that somebody's behaving 'inhuman,' it's not. It's very human - it's just not a very nice side of it.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.

No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds; they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.

I have a controversial opinion about evil, because I don't believe evil exists. I believe that actions are dark and destructive but I don't believe evil is a thing. I believe it's a by-product of man's fear and desperation.

The heart of man will always be dark. There will always be evil people. The problem is that there is nothing we can humanly do to change them.

People have their complexities. They have their heroic moments and their villainous moments, too.

I do not want to go into its physical reasons: the construction of the human body is different from that of carnivorous animals. But man's intelligence is such that it can be utilised to defend any-thing he does, whether right or wrong.

Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.

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.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.

All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.

We can't legislate human nature.

An animal takes freely anything that it wishes: it commits no sin and is not held responsible for its action because it knows no better. But as soon as the idea of 'mine' and 'thine' has been imprinted upon our consciousness, then also the responsibility comes.

Man is still the greatest miracle and the greatest problem on this earth.

Man as a pure animal does not exist.

The way I look at humanity, I don't think there's good guys or bad guys. We're all potentially bad and potentially good.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.