Human Duality Quotes

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.

It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should. But the very same people who are good sometimes are the very same people who are bad sometimes. It's funny but it's true. Its the same isn't it, for me and . . .

Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity.

I see that within each human being there are two extremes: there's the loving, the passionate, altruistic side that has evolved with us, and then there's the violent, brutal side that has evolved with us. The question for each individual is: which side is going to come out on top?

The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.

Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses.

We have an incredible capacity for the worst possible evil, all of us, it was that we also have this incredible capacity for good. And that is why we are all of us appalled when something bad happens. Because if the bad was the norm, we would just shrug our shoulders and say "well tough luck, this is how the cookie crumbles" kind of thing but none of us does that.

Sometimes I'm real cool, but sometimes I could be a real asshole. I think everyone is like that.

I've always had a fascination with vampires. It's not that I'm exactly fascinated with the dark side. It's the human struggle with it. How we deal with those two aspects of who we are. We all have those elements.

Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute.

I learned quite early on in life that we are all two people. And one of those people none of us will ever know.

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.

Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is very opposite of what it is above.

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.

Everyone on the planet has a dark and a light. That's a multi-dimensional character.

In civilized societies, we spend our lifetimes trying to become what is socially acceptable. We're dark and we're light. We all have both sides to us.

I don't think you can be good in life without acknowledging the part of you that isn't good.

An artist has an obligation to tell the truth. [...] that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. (And the heroes too). Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good, and great evil.

I wanted to write a play about double nature ... one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It's not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It's something we've got to live with

'Lucky' is for laughs, and there's really nothing funny that I'm doing on 'Dexter.' I think more than anything, both comment on the fact that anybody is capable of anything. Just because they are the shy guy in the corner doesn't mean that they are a harmless little bunny.

There is a dark side in all of us. And for us 'bad' people, the bad side dominates. I think there is a great sadness in villains, and I have tried to put that across. We cannot stop ourselves doing what we are doing.