George Gillespie Quotes

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 believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.

No man lives without fault.

T is the will that makes the action good or ill.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

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.

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

The problem here is with a human being, not with a monster, not with an animal. The human being does things that even the monster does not do, because the human is more sophisticated.

That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present.

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?

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.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

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.

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.

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

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.

Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

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.

Every person who is tempted to go astray does not deserve punishment

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil.

There is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil

The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.... The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.